It is not often that farmers go on strike. Forty thousand paddy growers have done so in the East Godavari district and adjoining areas in Andhra Pradesh. Their demand: make rice cultivation profitable. The striking farmers complain that the minimum support price (MSP) fixed by the government does not cover the cost of cultivation, let alone enabling a profit margin. Realising the gravity of the situation, the Andhra Pradesh government appointed the Mohan Kanda committee to ascertain circumstances that led to the crop holiday. However, the Centre has chosen to overlook this extraordinary event. With indications that many farmers in the key paddy-growing southern states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra may join their Andhra counterparts in the next cropping season, the danger now is that this localised protest can blow up into a large-scale farmers’ stir across the country.
It is important to note the Kanda committee had identified nearly a dozen reasons why the state’s farmers might be justified in their “crop holiday” protest. Low returns for a high-cost and labour-intensive crop like paddy is the most important reason. The rising cost of farm labour, an increasingly national problem, is another. This is partly owing to wage rates being pushed up as a consequence of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme, and in part due to rising demand for unskilled labour. The employment ministry’s Labour Bureau data show that the average daily wage rate for a male agricultural labourer in Andhra Pradesh rose from Rs 98.31 in 2008 to Rs 176.29 in 2010. The trend is similar in northern agricultural states like Punjab, Haryana, west Uttar Pradesh and adjoining areas. The protesting farmers, therefore, want MSP to be fixed at 50 per cent above the cost of production, which should include the imputed value of land, among other costs, to allow a reasonable profit margin so that they can cope with inflation-driven high cost of living. They also want a distinction to be made between MSP and the procurement price, the latter being closer to market rates.
Interestingly, these demands are in line with the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers (2006). The Commission, chaired by M S Swaminathan, had warned that a situation like the present one, entailing a “crop holiday”, could develop if farmers’ interests were continuously disregarded. Pointing out that the government-determined MSPs were below the cost of production for several crops, including wheat and paddy, the Commission had stated that the farmers were unlikely to continue growing the crops where they would not recover the cultivation expenses. This observation was largely borne out by survey numbers released by the National Sample Survey Office, which indicated that 40 per cent of the farmers wanted to give up farming because it was no longer profitable. Given this background, both the Centre and state governments must take such farmers’ protests seriously. It is crucial to the country’s food security.