Five ways to reduce farm distress

Indian agriculture can be revived by focusing on key priorities and combining all ongoing programmes under one umbrella. This will also serve to accelerate overall economic growth

Indian agriculture is confronted with high price volatility, climate risks and indebtedness. Since the majority of farmers (86 per cent) are small and marginal with declining and fragmenting landholdings, they are more vulnerable to uncertainty. The last two budgets of the government were pro-agriculture. More resources were allocated to agriculture and a number of programmes were initiated to increase irrigated area, improve soil health, promote agro-processing and cover production risk, among other things.

Despite this, it appears that agrarian distress is silently spreading across all states. It seems that all these programmes and schemes function independently of each other. Therefore,