dahiyars
December 30th, 2004, 10:18 PM
Growing Crisis in Agriculture
An unprecedented and all-encompassing agrarian crisis is deepening. India is moving fast towards severe food shortage and starvation. The per capita availability of food grain has declined and has reached a level unprecedented in the last five decades. The growth rate of productivity and production in agriculture is also declining. Unemployment is growing fast. The number of days of work available to a worker in a year and the wages of agricultural workers are declining. Indebtedness is growing. Many sections of the rural poor are being marginalised. The increasing migration of agricultural labourers, poor and middle peasants from the rural areas is causing serious social and economic problems. The steep fall in prices of agricultural commodities and the increase in prices of agricultural inputs have adversely affected the interests of all sections among the peasantry, particularly the poor. Poverty is spreading to new sections and areas. Starvation deaths and peasant suicides are increasing. Unevenness in growth and development, sectoral and spatial, is increasing.
Since independence, India has been able to make substantial gains in agricultural production, including cereal production. This has been made possible because of increases in aggregate area sown, the expansion of irrigation facilities, certain land legislation, the introduction of high-yielding seed, the use of fertilisers, improved implements, farm machines, and technology for pest management, a price policy based on minimum support price and procurement operations, infrastructure for storage and cold storage, increase in investments, improvements in the trade system and other factors. These achievements, however, have not stopped the growing crisis in agriculture; the crisis is caused by inherent structural defects in production relations, and the weakness of the path of development chosen as well as certain specific measures taken in the agrarian sector.
Dr.R.S.Dahiya
An unprecedented and all-encompassing agrarian crisis is deepening. India is moving fast towards severe food shortage and starvation. The per capita availability of food grain has declined and has reached a level unprecedented in the last five decades. The growth rate of productivity and production in agriculture is also declining. Unemployment is growing fast. The number of days of work available to a worker in a year and the wages of agricultural workers are declining. Indebtedness is growing. Many sections of the rural poor are being marginalised. The increasing migration of agricultural labourers, poor and middle peasants from the rural areas is causing serious social and economic problems. The steep fall in prices of agricultural commodities and the increase in prices of agricultural inputs have adversely affected the interests of all sections among the peasantry, particularly the poor. Poverty is spreading to new sections and areas. Starvation deaths and peasant suicides are increasing. Unevenness in growth and development, sectoral and spatial, is increasing.
Since independence, India has been able to make substantial gains in agricultural production, including cereal production. This has been made possible because of increases in aggregate area sown, the expansion of irrigation facilities, certain land legislation, the introduction of high-yielding seed, the use of fertilisers, improved implements, farm machines, and technology for pest management, a price policy based on minimum support price and procurement operations, infrastructure for storage and cold storage, increase in investments, improvements in the trade system and other factors. These achievements, however, have not stopped the growing crisis in agriculture; the crisis is caused by inherent structural defects in production relations, and the weakness of the path of development chosen as well as certain specific measures taken in the agrarian sector.
Dr.R.S.Dahiya