From Mrs Indira to Dr Manmohan, we need to thank all PMs for rural development (Jun 2020)

Today, on 30th June 2020, the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) briefly mentioned about the extent to which the government has supported the poor by providing them the ration in the difficult days of lockdown. It is remarkable that Indian government succeeded in feeding almost 80 crores people in India for more than 3 months for free. It is more than twice of the USA and European Union. Most of us might not look at this matter with surprise, but those who know that once India had “ship to mouth existence”, would certainly call it an achievement.
 
During the British Rule, more Indians were killed by the British policy of keeping the poor unfed than the direct massacre. Remember Churchill saying, “why hasn’t Gandhi died?”? The misery of India continued even after the independence because these things require time to improve. From Jawaharlal Nehru to Lal Bahadur Shastri, every Prime Minister stressed on the requirement of food security. In 1960’s, we had import food stocks to feed our population, which was increasing continuously. This type dependency on food over other countries raised questions on the sovereignty of India, every country which exported food stocks to India could dictate its terms and conditions. In that case, what was the point of attaining independence if we had to work as per the dictates of some other country?

First, remarkable, step was taken by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when she had launched ‘Green Revolution’. The revolution, to attain self sufficiency in terms of food security was an important matter for India’s sovereignty. The revolution was accepted by the masses and the agriculturalist with great enthusiasm. Every Prime Minister continued the principles underlined in the green revolution, which were – 

1. Income support to farmers through minimum support price
2. Creation of buffer stocks to deal with extraordinary situation
3. Normalisation of prices through sale of buffer stock time to time. 

Today, when the Prime Minister, releases the food stocks from the buffer stock of India, then we should be thankful to Mrs Gandhi for her initiation. Not only Mrs Gandhi but her trusted lieutenants in the battle like M. S. Swaminathan. 

It was during the reign of Atal Bihari Vajpayee that a mammoth task was undertaken by the government to create a network of metalled roads in every village. This required rural labourers. This spiralled up the labour demand in the rural area. Also, even the remotest village was now able to bring its produce to the markets which was not possible earlier because the transportation cost would have been much more than the production cost itself. 

During the reign of Dr Manmohan Singh, passing the legislation for the MGNREGA was another milestone, for which we should be thankful to him. Though, the programme went unsuccessful in the initial years from the economical perspective, but later on the government used it widely not only for the creation of the rural infrastructure but also the present government is eager to contain the migrant labourers within their village with the help of the scheme. 

Democracy is, in practice, a partisan exercise. When we bind ourselves with one particular political group, we tend to ignore the contribution of the others. This makes us myopic in our decision, and remember, we get the government we deserve. So next time, whenever you are told that nothing happened in the last 70 years, then you can answer that we achieved food security in last 70 years to the extent that the present Prime Minister can feed more the 80 crores population for more than 6 months. 

Step ahead? 
The present government has an equally important task to do when it comes to rural development. Today, many of the news articles and opinions talk about farmer suicide, but barely mention causes. Today, even after three decades of opening up our economy, we have kept our farmers under constraints. Every state government in the country, under the political pressure of middlemen, are afraid of taking any action for the welfare of the farmers, despite crying crocodilian tears for them in their election campaigns. 

To give freedom to the farmer, to sell his/her produce wherever she wants to, will be the least good we can do for her today. 

As per the current rules and regulation, any produce by the farmer needs to be sold in the nearest APMC Market. In that market, all the designated buyers must auction for the produce, but it is in theory. In practice, the designated buyers will make a cartel and would not buy the produce of a farmer more than the specified rate, which is extremely low. Sometimes, rates offered by the designated buyers is not sufficient to recover the basic cost. The farmer is bound to sell his produce there and nowhere else as per the state government laws. As a result, we see distress sales of farmers’ produce, resulting into farmer suicide. But the designated buyers, who get the produce at lowest minimum price from the farmer, sells the same commodity at maximum possible price in the market. Neither the final consumer is beneficiary nor is the farmer. Situation would have been different if the farmer was allowed to sell his produce directly to the consumer. 

Recent decision by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman is a welcome step in this direction. In her recent decisions, she made inter state commerce of agricultural goods beyond any restrictions of the draconian APMC act. Most of the state governments are not happy with the decision. Punjab government has expressed its refusal for this act as well. But for the larger good, this is a welcome step. 

Under Mrs. Indira Gandhi, we made initiations to attain food security. Under Mr. Vajpayee, we made strides in upgrading rural infrastructure. Under Dr Manmohan, we tried to check on the migration problem. Will we be able to look at the income security of the farmer under Modi regime? Only the time will tell. 

Credits: Shubham Rajput