Gandhiji's these words are as true today as they were 70 years back. Might be in numbers we have moved to 31% urban population, but we should not forget that close to 70% of 1.2 billion population is a huge number. Huge enough that if we ignore them we ignore our future...our progress...our souls..
Also, another fact that have not changed in so many years is that villages are still dependent on agriculture. Agriculture is not just the most risky business but also tests the best values of human being. It teaches them to be patient, optimistic and hopeful. But since long we have neglected this empowering profession.
For long time even I was fascinated by other professions like medical, engineering, administration etc. I gave secondary status to farming as I thought those who can't excel in other fields end up in farming. But now I realize how naive I was. I seldom realized that its the strong foundation of agriculture on which others build. If the foundation shakes it can take everything else along with it.
If we look historically, we can better appreciate the importance of agriculture. Indian continent could witness its first ever civilization - Indus Valley civilization just because people from Mehrgarh area shifted to fertile land of Indus. Here they could generate surplus. This surplus enabled certain section of society to engage in trade and commerce. Then started the whole chain of surplus -> trade and commerce -> cities -> more trade and commerce -> bigger cities. In such big and intermingled chain of events what we more appreciate is the cities and planning knowledge of Harappans. What we often miss is the great role played by agricultural surplus. Decline of Harappan civilization may be explained by many reasons but the most accepted view clearly underlines the imbalance created due to decline in agricultural production. That might have been due to river shifting or soil deterioration, that's not my point here, the important point is that agricultural production imbalance took with itself the millennium old civilization. It took another one and half millennium to reach such status of agricultural surplus so as to support another urbanization.
If I summarize in few words then M.S. Swaminathan's words resonate in my ears " if agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right in our country".
What I often wonder is if agriculture is so important then why do we accord so low status to it? Or why have we neglected it so far? I accorded secondary status to it because I was lacking a holistic view and also I had limited knowledge then. But I guess this is not the case with our policy makers. They are far read and experienced. Then why such dismal state? I have observed a list of problems in this sector, but for now I will start with a small incident. In my next writing I will jot down the ground level problems as observed by me and would pray that I get a chance in life to solve them. Let's see the story part first.
I got married around 2 years back. At that time my in-laws completed harvesting and got moong at home. At that time moong was getting sold at around 7k. Within few days prices started falling. My in-laws thought it may be because of bumper production so they waited for right time. It has been around 2 years and right time never came. Currently the prices are around 4k. Now this may seem like a usual business case study in which demand-supply mismatch happened and prices of commodity saw downfall. However, if I mention other events of these 2 years then we will realize how economics failed in agriculture either due to poor policy or poor implementation of good policy.
These events included:
1. Back to back drought in country due to El-nino
2. Huge pulses inflation , especially in cities. In Delhi I was buying moong dal at Rs 160/kg. when my in-laws were compelled to sell at Rs 50-60/Kg
3. Huge import of pulses from foreign. Indian government also signed many MoU with countries like Mozambique to maintain pulses supply.
There were many other like export ban on pulses, application of Essential commodities Act on pulses etc. Point is not that, what I want to emphasize is how come producer was not getting benefited when consumption demand was high and supply was limited. I read in my first economics chapter that demand-supply cycle decides the best price. In this both consumer as well as producers benefit. Then how come in agriculture, especially in case of moong farmers were getting no benefit from huge demand?
On one hand even with huge supply and production of wheat farmers of Punjab and Haryana get handsome return (through high MSP) while on other hand, farmers of pulses in Rajasthan are not even able to recover their input. Worrisome part is that this condition exists when we are forced to import pulses closes to world's total pulses trade.
I will give the long answer in my next article but the short answer is that in Indian agriculture not economics but politics works.
Continued...
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