| Every Government in India has been taking steps to provide in budgets farm loan waivers, Fertilser subsidy or Minimum support price or such other measure.These are supposed to make the life of farmers ( meaning most of the BPL families living in rural India, i will ignore rich farmers for simplicity) happy if not prosperous. The bad old days of pawn brokers who exploited the land owners during times of floods, drought, poor prices and pest attacks. The real problem at the root of farming is the amount of risk associated which are purely at the mercy of nature. The farmer who invests with borrowings can only reap the end results if everything goes well. Otherwise he loses his investment and becomes an easy target of the greedy middlemen, politicians and Public servants. Big businessmen can easily manipulate the scenario to their advantage. One thing that is clear to me.. If the farm output suffers, the endusers( common men) will have top pay very high to get very little. Farmers are only one part of the story. One solution possible is to transfer the complete risk to Government since government in any case is meant to safeguard common men and BPL families as minimum( simplicity ignores education and healthcare at this first step). Why not the government give FREE all requirements to farmers such as seeds,fertilisers, pesticides, electricity, water and product purchase systems. It may look absurd at first sight but look closely. The end prodct can be priced accordingly. since all these elements of input are anyway required, you are only transferring the risk from the poor farmer to the democracy of parliament. Final prices at retail can howver be adjusted by Government since everything is administered.any comments? |
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