Why Is Modi Government Reluctant To Meet Farmers’ Demands This Time?

Three days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to posthumously honour agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan with Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, farmers brought the agroeconomist back to the discourse to trouble the government.

Demanding a legal guarantee to minimum support price (MSP) on all crops and calculation of MSP based on Swaminathan’s formula, several farmers’ organisations have called for thronging the national capital with a massive gathering and a strike in rural India on February 16.

The MSP is the price at which the government buys from farmers. It serves as a protection against fall in the market prices.

In November 2021, when the protesting farmers finally withdrew their yearlong demonstration after PM Modi announced repealing the three farm laws they were against, the issue of legal guarantee to MSP was also part of the negotiations. The government was supposed to act on it in the following months but, farmers’ organisations allege, it did not.

Now, with the government disagreeing with the farmers’ demands on MSP, the administration is bent on preventing the entry of the farmers into Delhi from the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana, the hub of India’s ‘green revolution’.

Swaminathan is often considered the main architect of the green revolution in India. The National Commission on Farmers (NCF) headed by him had recommended in 2006 that the MSP should be at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production.

Farmers’ organisations argue that farmers cannot fix the price of their produce and have to accept whatever the market offers. This leaves them in perpetual risk of having to often sell their produce at loss-making prices. The implications of climatic changes, especially the changes in rainfall patterns, have left farmers exposed to even greater risks, they say.

While agriculture minister Arjun Munda has said a law guaranteeing MSP on crops “cannot be brought in a hurry without consulting all stakeholders”, unnamed government officials have been quoted in the media as saying that it would significantly increase the fiscal stress and leave very little money for other development and social goals.

However, according to agriculture researcher Devinder Sharma, meeting the farmers’ demand is not only possible but also the only way to save farmers from the deepening crisis in the sector. “Swaminathan showed it is possible. If we respect him, we should accept his suggestions and agree to the farmers’ demands,” he tells Outlook.

Referring to the government’s position that meeting the farmers’ demands is not economically feasible, he says, “The question that needs to be asked to the government is whether Swaminathan is wrong or the government’s advisors are.”

The administration, aiming to foil the protest programme, has turned Delhi into a fortress with the deployment of hundreds of security personnel. The police have already resorted to firing tear gas shells and caning to disperse protesters, apart from putting up road blockades with cement blocks, wired fencing, and even installing iron spikes on roads.

The BJP government in Haryana has imposed section 144 of the CrPC, restricting assembly of more than four persons, in several districts, apart from imposing internet shutdowns, to prevent farmers from reaching Delhi.

Criticising the police action, the late scientist’s daughter, Madhura Swaminathan, who heads the Economic Analysis Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) at Bengaluru, said that honouring Swaminathan requires “to take the farmers with us in whatever strategy we’re planning for the future”.

The Arguments Of Modi Govt And Critics

The Government of India fixes the MSP for 23 crops based on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP), views of state governments, and Union ministries and departments concerned.

The government has been arguing that the Swaminathan-headed committee also prepared the Draft National Policy for Farmers, which was subsequently approved by the Government as National Policy for Farmers (NPF), 2007. However, the NCF’s 2006 commendation that the MSP should be at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production was not included in the NPF.

“To give recognition to one of the important recommendations of NCF on price policy, the government in its Union Budget for 2018-19 had made a historical announcement to keep MSP at a level of one and half times of the cost of production as a predetermined principle,” agriculture minister Arjun Munda informed the Parliament earlier in February.

MSPs for all mandated Kharif, Rabi, and other commercial crops have been fixed with a return of at least 50 per cent overall India weighted average cost of production, each year, since 2018-19, Munda said.

Farmers’ leaders, however, reject the contention that Swaminathan’s recommendations have been implemented.

“The government is lying through its teeth when it says they are adhering to Swaminathan’s recommendations. They are not calculating the comprehensive cost as suggested by Swaminathan,” says Hannan Mollah, Vice President of the CPI(M)-affiliated All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), India’s largest farmers’ organisation and a constituent of the protesting farmers’ umbrella forum.