Farmer's Distress in India

Farmer's Distress In India 

Farmer's Distress In India 

Respected GTO sir and my dear friends. I have chosen to speak on 'Farmer's Distress in India' which is a very crucial topic to know for citizens of every section of the society. My topic covers introduction, challenges faced by farmers and initiatives to tackle the issue.

Farmer's distress in India is a stark example of growing inequality, government's neglect and inefficiencies of farmer welfare schemes. The quantum of distress can be measured by looking at the number of farmers committing suicide every year.

In the 21st century, everyone talks about IT, computers and industries but no one really cares about agriculture and farmers. Agriculture gives livelihood to around 55% of Indian population but contributes to only 15% of the GDP. This clearly shows that how badly we have neglected our agriculture. The result of this neglect gets reflected in the marginalised condition of Indian small and marginal farmers. This forced them to commit suicide or migrate.

Agriculture in India is called a gamble of monsoons. Above that agriculture to remain profitable for farmers many more things are expected to fall in place. Low produce results into less profit and producing more than demand also leads to fall in general prices of farm produce.

While farmers who have access to irrigation are better placed, those who are in rain fed and drought prone areas are most vulnerable. They occupy 60% of the cultivated area, but contribute only 45% of total agricultural production. A single crop failure due to drought, flood or similar reasons can collapse them.

lt is highly unfortunate that in a country like India where approximately 70% of the total population is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, the cases of farmer suicides are increasing by the day. 11.2% of the total suicides in the country are farmer suicides.

There are major challenges which are faced by farmers in India. Some of them includes small agricultural land holdings, undersupply of HYV seeds, absence of irrigation facilities, lack of mechanisation, minimum support prices crisis etc.

There are also problems with the current insurance schemes as farmers are not aware of it. Very few farmers have heard of such schemes. Apart from this low penetration of Financial Institutions also adds to the cause of poor insurance coverage.

Defenceera

Other measures taken by the government like loan waiver of farmers is a populist step, this will not improve the health of Indian agriculture and farmers. Despite

this the money should be used to improve the resillience of Indian agriculture by providing good irrigation facilities in the rainfed areas.

Government has taken initiatives to tackle with this issue. Schemes like increasing coverage of e-NAM (National Agriculture Market), higher allocation for long term irrigation fund, expansion in coverage of PMFBY (Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna) have been initiated but there is a need to do more for this problem.

Thank you

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