New Farm Bill — India

In my opinion government should roll back the farm bill, here is why.

Historically, Humans have seen so many difficult transitions good or bad in the lifetimes. Good or Bad is just a perspective. let’s see the key trends.

JOBS:

Traditionally humans used to hunt and grow for themselves. When the productivity rose, they started trading- that’s how business started (barter, currency, shares etc).

then came Industrial revolution and that brought Manufacturing, services, IT and so on

therefore, there is has been a considerable shift from Agriculture to other occupations.

In US In 1820, 72 percent of the workforce was employed in “farm occupations.” By the late 1980s however, that number had fallen to just about 2 percent

While it is true that less than 2 percent of Americans are directly employed by the agricultural industry, many more work for a business that is adjacent to it or otherwise dependent upon it. More than 22 million people are employed in agriculture related field. That’s one in 12 American jobs. These are jobs in fields like food science and food inspection, packaging, conservation or agricultural engineering. source

So that being the trend, sooner or later India will catch up.

We are already witnessing and going through the following transition post-independence in terms of job preferences

Agriculture to Government services →Government services to Private sector jobs → Private sector jobs to working for Multinationals → Multinationals to creating start-ups→ Entrepreneurship leading to global markets.

TRANSPORTATION:

Bullock Cart/ Animals → Cycles → Petrol/diesel/kerosene based (polluting) vehicles →Ethanol mix petrol and BSVI standards → CNG → EV 2 wheelers → E-rickshaws →EV cars →Drones

Every other day auto and taxi unions used to strike for increasing minimum fare, while providing poor service. There was huge resistance by the pressure groups when Delhi wanted to switch from diesel autos to CNG politics delayed the adoption till the Supreme court intervened and forced this transition. All this time general public was suffering.

With the coming of new age vehicle aggregators like Ola, Uber etc people voluntarily chose to adopt a clean way of transactions. Suddenly the cab usage increased, drivers are happy they work at their convenience no more mafias to feed at railway stations and airports.

All this will further change when self-driving cars would come into picture. Why should the car sit in parking lot morning to evening when not in use? The resources would be utilized better.

Bigger change would happen when Drones become mainstream!!

Same has been the case for the adoption of technology in other areas

FUEL

Wood →Coal (govt controlled initially) →Kerosene (govt controlled initially)→LPG (govt controlled initially)→PNG (anytime any amount)

… So on and so forth

The trend is to move from government-controlled resources and markets to adopting cleaner, efficient and profitable technologies dictated by market forces.

Coming back to Indian agriculture, approximately 60 percent of the Indian population works in the industry, contributing about 18 percent to India’s GDP. This share decreases gradually with each year, with development in other areas of the country’s economy.

The arable land area in the country is the second largest in the world after United States. The total cultivated land area in India in fiscal year 2016 was approximately 1.5 million hectares. According to the World Bank, as of 2015, approximately 38 percent of the land area in India is suitable for agriculture. This value is decreasing continuously due to urbanization. source

India’s ~60 % population contributes 18% to India’s GDP and using 38% landmass.

Obviously, we are doing inefficient farming. However young educated Indian farmers will seek new technologies and diversify in farming and many of these young farmers would become entrepreneurs and lookout for global footprint (e.g. Kinnaur apples). No one can stop this from happening.

What are the root causes for farmer distress? Monsoons, rains? farm implements? fertilizers? exploitation by money lenders? commision agents? government taxes on produce? less rate for the effort? How are prices decided? who decides these rates? — — unfortunately market forces decide at what price you and me will buy and at what price farmer will sell and then there are middlemen including government.

When market forces are the once who decide, then all the interventions by government will be short term or irrelevant in due course of time. e.g global price of wheat and other crops are falling because production is outpacing consumption.therefore to remain profitable, farmers have to be strategic and open for diversification. Therefore bills or no bill, farmers know there trade well and will self diversify and react to market forces. so why bother to introduce farm bill?

Agriculture if not done in strategic and systematic manner would cause losses to farmers. MSP regime is unsustainable in future, maybe the governments will drag it for political reasons, like minimum fare for autos and taxis it would be an irrelevant number.

Old school unions, Politicians, People in comfort zone etc will always oppose change, but the change normally happens voluntarily. End of the day agriculture is also a business and market dynamics will shape it automatically whether we pass bills or not.

Therefore, in my opinion government should withdraw the bill, when enough farmers will start suffering and mandis would have lost the sheen(which already is the case)and there is a clear pattern of exploitation over a period of time, government at that time should bring the relevant remedies. till then let it go the way it is. That would be the perfect time to introduce the bill to safeguard the farmer interest.

Remember police and government always have to come after the incident (vaardat) in India.

E.g laws against NRIs for fake holiday marriages etc. were formulated when Indian families especially in Punjab were facing this exploitation.

Let the people suffer first then solve the problem that’s how it has been so far.

Normally there is a tipping point when change automatically happens.

Lastly, even the model of governance is also under transformation Reactive and Corrupt → Proactive →self-regulated (ultimate human goal) This too is in transition, so interesting times ahead.

Comments/critique welcome