Fielding hope

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?s response to the agricultural crisis affecting rural India is both compassionate and practical.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s response to the agricultural crisis affecting rural India is both compassionate and practical. No Indian can remain unaffected by the reports of suicides — by last count nearly 600 — in the Vidarbha region alone. Failed crops and the bane of usurious credit are never, we suspect, sufficient cause for people to take the terrible step of ending their lives. These have been unfortunate constants in India’s rural landscape for far too long. What probably tips the balance is a shattering of self-confidence by forces barely understood: vagaries of the weather brought on by global warming or the globalised market that brings uncertain movements in the prices of produce and inputs.

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The decision to provide interest waivers on loans, enhancing agricultural credit, along with measures to improve irrigation and provide better seeds, should bring some comfort to a region wracked with distress. But this should merely be a preliminary for longer-term and sustained policies to transform Indian agriculture. The UPA’s victory in the 2004 election was seen as a message from the rural voter to the political class in India. Since the mid-Eighties, rural India has been left to fend for itself — agricultural extension programmes have sputtered, public health and education systems have collapsed and small irrigation projects have ground to a halt. From the outset, the UPA government has expressed its determination to reverse these trends. In the space of two years, it has doubled rural credit to Rs 1,60,000 crore per annum. The new Bharat Nirman programme has begun to push investment to the countryside for more power, educational and irrigation facilities. But there’s need for bolder decisions such as reducing subsidies — going primarily to the rich farmer — and channeling the Rs 40,000 crore or more saved to boost investment in rural infrastructure.

Advanced economies of the US and the EU cherish their farmers and jealously protect their interests. Agribusiness and exports are as vital components of their economies as are manufactured goods and services. India needs to see its rural heartland as an asset, rather than a liability, and work on solutions that will boost productivity and incomes and the quality of life of rural Indians.