‘Agriculture should not be neglected’ - The Great Swaminathan's favourite refrain!

The Statesman, 29 June

In the midst of the turbulence that the Budget session of Parliament witnessed, the Rajya Sabha got a new nominated member, distinguished agricultural scientist Prof MS Swaminathan. His nomination came when the House had discussed the agrarian crisis several times and policymakers felt the need to hear a seasoned professional on the issue.
Agriculture has been a lifelong passion for Prof Swaminathan and he continues to head several institutions devoted to farm research. A plant geneticist by training, Prof Swaminathan was educated at Madras and Cambridge universities. He has received honorary doctorates from 52 universities and has been fellow of several national and international societies, including the Royal Society of London. Known for his advocacy of sustainable agriculture leading to an “ever-green revolution,” Prof Swaminathan was acclaimed by the **Time** magazine as one of the 20 most influential Asians of the 20th century, one of the three from India, the other two being Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1961, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971 and the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, in 2000.
At present, he is the president of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and chairman of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation. Recently, as the chairman of the National Commission on Farmers, he submitted five voluminous reports on the state of Indian agriculture, suggesting enactment of a Food Guarantee Act.
The 81-year-old “young” MP is now looking forward to a new career in Parliament, and hopes to interact fruitfully with the
country’s law-makers. In this interview with DEEPAK RAZDAN, he shared his views on several critical issues.

Do you think it was the government’s lack of information on agriculture that led to farmers’ suicides?

I think it was not lack of information. When the first suicides were reported from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, the Wynad district of Kerala and then Vidarbha, I think some explanations were given that it was not related to agrarian causes. You know, there was some rationalisation - suicides happen in all parts of the country, all of society. But what we
call farmers’ suicides is specifically related to agricultural causes, where farming has been either an economic disaster or an ecological disaster, and there, I think, the government took some time to wake up. In Andhra suicides were taking place, the then chief minister gave a number of reasons why, but it was not taken seriously.
Only when it started getting persistent, when it became a chronic problem in certain areas like Yeotmal district and Wardha district in Vidarbha, then I think people started realising that this is a very serious matter. It’s a blot on our nation’s conscience that we allow the people who are feeding the country to take their own lives, and therefore state governments started setting up studies and commissions. The government set up so many committees. We in the National Farmers Commission also went into it in great depth and gave a number of recommendations.
Ultimately, it related. In Vidarbha, for example, the economics of farming became adverse, the cost of cultivation was high, the output price was uncertain. Many times in rain-fed areas, purely unirrigated areas, very costly technologies were propagated and when the crops failed, the farmers did not have the capacity to withstand the shock. Our credit system is also at fault. We have recommended in the National Commission on Farmers report that the credit cycle should be at least five years. In other words, if I borrow this year, I should pay it back within five years. The present rule is if you don’t pay the same year, then you are out of the normal credit system. A farmer has to go to the moneylender. There is no other way. And the moneylenders also became merchants, they bought the crops and they became the extension input suppliers. They were all rolled into one - extension agent, credit supply, marketing and so on. As a result, the farmers were very hard hit.

Had the policy-makers been aware of the farmers’ plight, they would have taken some remedial action. Wasn’t the government adequately informed?

I would not say the government was not adequately informed, but it was not adequately activated to action. I would call it policy fatigue. They are talking about technology fatigue but for all fatigues, technology fatigue, extension fatigue, the underlying cause is policy fatigue. So, it was indifference for some time, and then the approach was: give some relief to the widow, a lakh of rupees or something. It becomes like any other disaster. This is not a disaster of that kind, it is not an earthquake, it’s the accumulated result of agrarian neglect.
So, you need a different remedy. For every malady, the remedy has to be different; some amount of relief has to be given immediately but that is not the only answer.

Agriculture is on the Concurrent List. Does it help or create confusion?

We have recommended very strongly in the National Farmers Commission report that agriculture should be on the Concurrent List for the simple reason that almost all major decisions whether external trade like WTO, or credit supply, or technology, ICAR and so on are all with the Government of India. If you take research, credit, pricing, marketing, these are all controlled by the Government of India. And all the foreign policies like farmers’ rights and so on are international. I think it is high time we recognise that both the Centre and the states should combine together. When we say Concurrent List, they should have a strong action partnership. Concurrent list or not, today the most critical decisions are taken by the Centre - interest rates, credit policy, loan policy, marketing policy, pricing. The Agricultural Costs and Prices Commission is administered by the ministry of agriculture. And the bottom line of the farmers’ fate is marketing and pricing.

In rural areas farmers are committing suicide, while in cities people are crying over high prices. Can you explain what is really happening ?

Between what the farmer gets and what the urban consumer pays - this is particularly true for vegetables and fruits - there is no relation at all. Pulses, for example, may be very costly in cities, but most pulses are produced in dry farming areas, purely rain-fed areas. The farmers get 10 to 15 per cent of what the urban consumer pays. Therefore, you must look at the whole price chain, the marketing chain and see how we can ensure that the farmer gets a fair price. Prices in cities are based on demand and supply. Today wages of all IT professionals are higher. When I was in the government, the highest salary that I got was Rs 2,250 as member of the Planning Commission. But you know we lived with that money. Today everything has gone up, rentals, prices and all the malls that have come up have high transaction costs. Formerly, you were buying from the street vendor, the lady who used to bring it you. This whole culture is changing for a few. Farmers are not benefiting from all this.

There is a lot of talk of four per cent agriculture growth. Can we take it that at four per cent, poverty will be a thing of the past in villages?

Poverty will not be a thing of the past because many people are very poor, do not own land, there is a large percentage of landless labour. Eighty per cent of our people own one acre, half acre or less than one hectare. They must have multiple livelihood. May be livestock. Agricultural growth rate of four per cent involves about eight per cent growth rate in horticulture and animal husbandry. That is not difficult. That can be achieved. Four per cent growth rate is not difficult, if all the recommendations of the National Farmers Commission are accepted. We made five major recommendations, if they are adopted, we will have even more than four per cent.

Can you briefly recount the recommendations ?

The five major recommendations are: first, soil health care. Our soils are very hungry and thirsty. They have been cultivated for a long time, micro-nutrients particularly are lacking, organic matter is lacking. We recommended a soil health card, strengthening the whole soil health monitoring system - soil laboratories, testing laboratories, mobile vans.
Second is water - water harvesting, water use efficiency. Today we are quarrelling over TMCs of water. We don’t talk about what we are doing with each TMC. On the qualitative aspects of water use, more crop and more income per crop we have given a number of recommendations. The third is credit and insurance. These two should be completely revamped because hardly four per cent of farmers are covered by insurance. Credit has to be linked with insurance. The fourth is technology and inputs. There should be the right kind of technology for dry farming.
There is no use recommending in the suicide-prone areas of Vidarbha very expensive technology like Bt Cotton. They don’t have irrigation. If the rains fail, they are in difficulty. It should have been an organic farming zone. We have recommended that in all the 33 districts which have seen farmers’ suicides.
We have asked that they be declared as Special Agriculture Zones (SAZs) like the SEZ. The fifth recommendation is on pricing and marketing.

Were some of these not to be taken care of by extension services?

If you read the Planning Commission reports, if you read the Prime Minister’s speech at the NDC, they say extension has collapsed. Even Mr Chidambaram said it in his last Budget speech - at most places there is no staff, there is no transportation. I have travelled the length and breadth of the country. I will not put the blame on the extension staff themselves. They have nothing to extend, by way of knowledge. They don’t maximise the benefits of these people.

Presenting one of your reports, you mentioned that if agriculture is neglected, extremist groups will never run short of manpower. Would you explain?

This is a serious situation. Social unrest and food riots can take place. More Naxalites will come. In the US there are one million farming families, we have 115 million farming families. Farming is not just producing food, it is the backbone of the livelihood security system of 70 crore people in our country. Therefore, we should realise the seriousness of what is happening in the countryside.

We are importing food now. Why has such a situation come about?

But we are also exporting rice. We are importing wheat because of the policy of allowing the private sector into it. Five years ago the Central government had over 60 million tons of foodgrain. The Food Corporation of India did not know where to store it. Now it has come to a stage where we have to import because whatever the government buys, Cargill and many other big people are also buying. The government buys for food security and for public distribution system, the others buy for commercial profit. If these two are to co-exist in purchases of essential staples, then you should have a long-term policy. How are you going to manage the food budget. What we are doing is a knee-jerk reaction. That is why we have recommended very strongly in the Farmers Commission report that a National Food Security and Sovereignty Board chaired by the Prime Minister should be set up with the food minister and others, but more importantly, leaders of all political parties, the chief ministers of surplus states like Punjab and chief ministers of deficit states. The food policy is too important a matter to be left to one ministry or a few bureaucrats.

Parliament functions on party lines. Are you prepared to hear remarks that can be inspired by political compulsions?

You see, I am a professional, I will never change my views. I will not compromise at this stage in my life. I am not going to compromise on my views. Parties have different viewpoints. As long as they don’t play politics with hunger it’s ok. I have always said hunger-free India must be beyond politics. What we have written in our report is pan-political. For example, the National Food Sovereignty Board is a pan-political board, not one political party, all political parties are represented. I think this is important in matters of vital importance to the future of our country, to the future of our children… because there is so much malnutrition. Newspapers are full of articles about India having the “largest number of malnourished children in the world,” “the largest number of hungry people in the world.”
On the one hand we project eight per cent, nine per cent growth rate. I agree things would be worse if we didn’t have the growth rate. It is not that growth rate is not important, but the time has come for us to really convert the concept of inclusive growth into reality, from purely jargon to something of an accomplishment.

Do you foresee farming one day becoming an attractive vocation for young people?

Agriculture will become attractive if it is more intellectually stimulating, that is why modern information technology, modern communication technology, modern biotechnology, nanotechnology, space technology are important. You can give the fishermen a cell phone and tell him where the fish are, where the high tide is, we must do technological upgrading. What did we do in the sixties, we brought technological upgrading in agriculture, it is now time for us to bring the best in modern science and technology, blended with traditional wisdom and then younger people will be interested. An educated person is not going to go behind oxen or a bullock cart. They want to have more intellectual stimulation and economic reward, and that is possible because agriculture is the only pathway for a job-led economic growth, the rest are all jobless growth. The only way you can have a job-led economic growth is by strengthening agriculture. I mean crop husbandry, animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry, agro-processing, it is not crops alone, not just wheat and rice.

(The interviewer is Editorial Consultant with The Statesman, New Delhi)