Farm distress is undoubtedly one of the challenges before the Government as to how to mitigate it, if not resolve it all at once due to various constraints. The biggest contributory factor is the low incomes of the farmers not commensurate with the input costs plus the notional wages as almost the entire family is engaged in the farm activities.
The Government in the current budget allocated considerable funds for the agricultural sector, almost doubling it which could result in doubling the farmers’ income by the year 2022. This was revealed by the Prime Minister in his address to the farming community a few days back citing various schemes to back his optimism. Proper irrigation facilities, crops insurance, no loss of crop failures to be borne by the farmers, using soil health cards, availability of manures as and when the need felt were some of the schemes reiterated by the Prime Minister to get his Government’s preferred attention.
The farmers must get the right price for their crops which they usually do not and their incomes remain low while in almost all other sectors, incomes steadily increase and over a decade or so, have more than doubled. MSP being directly or indirectly linked with the retail prices, the latter must necessarily be not commanding about the fixation of the MSP. For that unnecessary pressure, mostly political and vote bank influenced must not prevail upon the Government.
When farmers are reasonably satisfied about the returns of their hard work, they have all the reasons to continue with their agricultural activities otherwise the rate of bidding adieu to the traditional farming would start increasing at an alarming rate. We all must find adequate interest in matters related to agriculture and not turn into a political arena to settle scores.
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