Denying farmers MSP is injustice

The distance the Narendra Modi Government maintains between its professions and practice is reflected in the Union Government’s stance vis-à-vis the demands of the agitating farmers.

It is not even a fortnight that the Union Govt headed by Mr. Modi conferred the highest civilian award of Bharat Ratna on two icons associated with agriculture, its practitioners and champions i.e., Chaudhury Charan Singh and father of Green Revolution Dr. MS Swaminathan.

Yet the same government is showing aversion to implementing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) which is at the core of the recommendations made by National Commission on Farmers headed by Dr. Swaminathan in 2006.

While showing its back to the farmers, the government has done everything to torpedo the agitation around the capital.

The security forces even showered them with tear gas from the drone, the legality of the same could be questioned as drones are so far deployed for monitoring alone. Incidentally Mr. Modi himself, as chief minister of Gujarat and chairman of a working group, had presented a memorandum in 2011 to the then prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh urging the government to ensure through a legislation that nothing below the MSP would be the basis of transaction between the farmers and the traders.

Although the MSP is applicable to 23 crops, in practice it is merely wheat and paddy that fetch the MSP to the farmers, given their centrality to the food security of the nation.

For all practical purposes it is the price at which the government procures these two key food grains. It is the refusal of the government to provide legal backing to the MSP that has triggered the current protest.

The MSP as recommended under the formula, should be at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production.

The Manmohan Singh Govt while announcing the formula had desisted from incorporating it under the law. The Agricultural Policy had merely agreed that MSP would be as commonly referred C2+50%. Even the BJP had included this in its assurances prior to 2014.

The farmers have been seeking its acceptance and incorporation in the law. The Shanta Kumar Committee, in its report in 2015 had stated that only 6% of the farmer could avail of MSP, which directly means that 94% of the farmers in the country are deprived from the benefit of the MSP.

This has left the farmers at the mercy of the traders and middlemen. There is grave apprehension among the farmers that the Government is refusing to bring in the MSP Guarantee Act under the pressure from the corporates who, it is feared, will subject the farmers to exploitation as most farmers are under debt and forced to sell the crop at the prices demanded by the traders, who in any case are in a position to dictate them.

The farmers' insistence on the law comes in the wake of growing cost of inputs, low public investments and low priority and low supply of formal sector credit to farmers.

This has rendered farming a doubtful enterprise. There is always the risk of market prices dipping below the remunerative level.

An MSP in place and procurement intervention is the way to ensure that markets offer remunerative prices, and when they fail to do that, the government steps in. That is the guarantee farmers are asking for.