Farmer losses Rs.36,000 due to prices falling below MSP

• This year farm produce procurement prices have gone below the government-set minimum support price (MSP) for major kharif crops.
• Just by not getting the support price, total loss incurred by farmers is estimated to be Rs 36,000 crore in seven kharif crops -- paddy, maize, bajra, soyabean, groundnut, urad and cotton due to lack of government action.
• In reality, the announced MSPs are highly inadequate.
• It could be as much as Rs 200,000 crore if the loss is calculated from the actual cost of production plus 50% profit as assured by BJP in its election manifesto of 2014.
• The losses would be much more if other crops and perishable items such as potatoes and onions, are also considered.
• Six states have announced farm loan waivers following the Prime Minister’s announcement of a loan waiver amounting to Rs 36,000 crore during his UP election campaign. These waivers account for Rs 1.5 lakh crore or 23% of institutional lending.  
• The reasons that led to high indebtedness do not change. The banker will be double-cautious to give a fresh loan to this ‘defaulted’ farmer’ next time. The credit culture goes for a toss. 
• RBI and NABARD have termed farm loan waivers temporary and inadequate measures, which will provide short-term gain for long-term pain. 
• Loan waivers are not a permanent solution and the government cannot runaway from the fact that only remunerative prices for their crops will enable farmers to survive without loan waivers.
• American farm subsidies are egregiously expensive, harvesting $20 billion a year. Most of the money goes to big, rich farmers producing staple commodities such as corn and soyabeans.
• The country has failed to manage surplus, often forcing farmers to dump tomato/ potato crops onto the streets, and it is here that infrastructure development is desperately required. This has to be followed up by various initiatives to provide cheaper credit and other measures to prop up agriculture.
• Unless farmer emerges debt free, there is no way farming can be turned into a profitable venture. It is estimated that Rs 12.50 lakh crore is the level of farm indebtedness that prevails.
• At present, only six percent farmers get the benefit of MSP. Ninety four percent of farmers are dependent on the markets. If these markets were efficient, there is no reason why farming should have been in a terrible crisis.
• Modi must understand that being on a perpetual promissory mode is fraught with dangers. So far, Modi remained in perpetual dream-merchant mode, promising endless undertakings. Inability to deliver such pledges is now beginning to catch up.

On March 2, 2015, Narendra Modi became the first serving Prime Minister to visit Parliament canteen as a customer and have lunch. After paying Rs 29 for his lunch, PM Modi wrote in the visitors' diary: Annadata Sukhi Bhavah (May provider of food prosper). Two years later, the same provider of food is angry, hitting the streets and massive agitations were witnessed in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The Modi government overlooked the fact that farming in India works beyond the limits of loans. Modi government's flagship schemes have not made any difference to lives of farmers. In Feb 2015, Modi government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying, 'Although we have promised in our manifesto that we will give remunerative prices to farmers as per the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission, we are unable to do that because we find it impractical to do so. Therefore, we cannot do it.' In fact latest MSP's doesn't even cover the cost of production.

Sadar Sarovar Dam: Incomplete but Modi inaugurates!

Amid protests and allegations of little work done on it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, spent his 67th birthday on Sep 17, 2017, in his native Gujarat and dedicated the Sardar Sarovar Dam to the nation. Rehabilitation of the submergence-affected population is about 80% incomplete, but the Prime Minister declared the project complete! 

• The foundation stone of the Sardar Sarovar Dam was laid by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on April 5, 1961.The Planning Commission finally approved the project in 1988. The construction on the project began 26 years later in 1987, when his grandson Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Sardar Sarovar Dam is the most controversial development project of the nation. 
• Sardar Sarovar Dam (1.2 km long dam is 163 metres deep) is the biggest dam in the world after the Grand Coulee Dam in the United States. The project aims to benefit about 10 lakh farmers.
• The Sardar Sarovar Dam has two power houses - river bed power house and canal head powerhouse. The two powerhouses have the installed capacity of 1,200 MW and 250 MW respectively. Power generated from the Sardar Sarovar Dam will be shared among Maharashtra 57%, Madhya Pradesh 27% and Gujarat 16%. The dam has so far produced 4,141 crore units of electricity, so far.
• Sardar Sarovar project was estimated to cost Rs.6,400 crores in 1988. The construction was backed by funds from the World Bank. Revised estimates in 1996-97 was Rs 13,000 crore. The present project cost is around Rs. 60,000 crore. 
• There is no credible assessment of the costs, benefits and impact of the project. Whether the project was boon or bane - reviews conducted once by World Bank and another by Govt of India and in both cases, the outcome was the project in its current form should not go ahead. That answer was available about 25 years ago.
• Sardar Sarovar Project is expected to supply drinking water to 29 million inhabitants across 131 towns and 9,633 villages in the state of Gujarat.
• The project is still incomplete with over 43,000 km of canals (out of total 70,000 km of canals) yet to be completed despite the BJP ruling the state for the last 22 years. All the incomplete canal network of the project are in the drought-prone areas of Kutch, Saurashtra and north Gujarat. The SSP’s basic objective is far from achieved. State government is guilty of criminal negligence for unilaterally reducing canals length from 90,000 kms to 70,000 kms without consulting Narmada Control Authority and truncating the benefits to state.
• Experts opined that if water tables were improved and electricity tariffs reduced, there was no need to build such a large dam. There were other options available. Neither Central Gujarat nor Ahmedabad were a priority for the Sardar Sarovar Project. Planned priority work is not happening.
• The celebrations for the completion of the dam are merely a poll plank. The CAG and Planning Commission had earlier pointed out that due to incomplete canal network, farmers are losing about Rs.1,800 crore every season.
• The Narmada Bachao Andolan led by activist Medha Patkar has claimed that after raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, about 40,000 families in 192 villages in Madhya Pradesh will be displaced. The government has put the number of displaced families at 18,386 in Madhya Pradesh. 
• According to an estimate, more than 5 lakh families are battling displacement problems.
• The consistent struggle by social activists spearheaded by Medha Patkar on environment and rehabilitation issues to dismantle the project built a huge amount of pressure on the World Bank forced to review the project. On concluding the fact that inadequate assessment had been made by the Indian government, the World Bank cancelled the loan in 1993.
• The 150-km stretch of the Narmada downstream from the dam is now dry most of the year and the claim of 600 cusecs being released is not supported by any clinching evidence. The livelihood of at least 10,000 families depending on the Narmada estuary stands destroyed. 
• In the next assembly elections run up in 2018, BJP will have to answer several tough questions like reduction in canal length, incomplete canals in North Gujarat, Kutch & Saurashtra, illegal diversion of waters in canals, no additional acreage brought into cultivation during the past five years, delays resulting in huge cost over runs with no additional benefits and most importantly incomplete rehabilitation issues etc. 

Modi is expert in chest thumping few positive achievements and never touching any negative things or wrongdoings and manages media to sing to his tune. So far he was successful with his rhetoric, oratory skills and charisma. But he can't fool all the people all the times. He is bound to face music for his lies and misdeeds in Gujarat itself in 2018 and price nation has paid by then is enormous. While selective truth hammering is any politician's trait, but people expect absolute truth from Prime Minister's mouth and truth is the last thing Modi speaks. At the sight of telling lies to public, Prime Minister, Chief Minister & all Ministers must be disqualified from their positions, the rule book should be amended.

Rural revolt destroys Modi's 3rd year celebration plans

• Humongous plans for the third anniversary celebrations of the Narendra Modi led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government were announced in mid May. The 22 days celebrations were to be conducted from May 25 to June 15 by the BJP.
• These celebrations of the BJP-led NDA government will be centred around PM Modi, with a ‘Making of Developed India (MODI)’ festival as the highlight, as 450 leaders, including Union ministers, BJP chief ministers, MPs, MLAs and office-bearers spread across 900 cities and towns starting May 26 to educate the masses about its achievements since 2014. A control room is being set up in Delhi to monitor the programmes and visits of the BJP leaders between May 26 and June 15.
• The plans visualised Modi writing two crore letters and sending 10 crore SMS messages to common people, front-page advertisements in 400 newspapers across the country displaying Modi’s visuage and listing his government’s achievements, 30- and 60-second advertisements on television and radio on all the 22 days of the celebration period, and 300 multimedia exhibitions in various States.
• Booklets titled “Then and Now (UPA and NDA)”, to highlight how the country had marched ahead under Modi. The agriculture sector is given special focus in the booklets. 
• The government’s promotional programmes did not make any reference to its pre-election promises on the agricultural front and its failure to fulfill them. Instead it talked about the government’s ambitious rural development initiatives aimed at doubling farmers’ incomes in real terms by 2022 and uniting the fragmented markets to achieve the goal of “one nation, one market”.
• This self-aggrandizement project ran to the satisfaction of the various organizers for about a week, that is, until June 1, 2017, the day farmers’ organisations in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra started separate agitations demanding farm loan waiver and a hike in minimum support prices (MSP) in tune with the promise made by the BJP governments both at Centre and in the two States. 
• The BJP had promised during the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign that it would implement the recommendations of M.S. Swaminathan commission 2006 that suggested that the MSP should be above 50% profit margin on input cost.
• Barely a week after the commencement of the farmers’ agitations, the grandiose third anniversary celebration plans were in a shambles, thoroughly exposing the hollowness of the government’s claims, especially about enhancing the rural economy and boosting farmers’ interests. The eventful one week witnessed intensification of the agitations in the two big States, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, with farmers dumping milk and vegetables on roads and damaging vehicles, resisting attempts by the police and the security forces to quell them. The escalated violence resulted in the killing of six farmers in police firing in Madhya Pradesh.
• The responses from the BJP, including CM's Fadnavis and Chouhan  were to brand the agitations as politically motivated vandalism sponsored by the opposition Congress and NCP. They insisted that the farm sector was successful under the Modi regime and that the farmers’ agitations were entirely unwarranted. So much so that both the leaders either refused to initiate talks with farmers’ representatives for discussions. But none of these tactics succeeded. The developments since June 1, 2017 and the nationwide response, put them on the back foot. While Fadnavis announced a loan waiver for farmers with less than two hectares of land, Chouhan, after launching a dramatic indefinite fast to bring peace and calm down the agitating farmers, announced that purchasing farm produce at rates lower than the MSP would be treated as a crime.
• MP CM SS Chouhan should have been asked to step down for his failure to assess brewing discontentment among farmers and mismanaging the whole situation. The fact that compensation was increased from Rs.5 lakhs for each dead person increased to Rs.10 lakhs and then to Rs.1 crore indicates panicky management.
• There is no guarantee that the resentment in the two States and in the farm sector in the rest of the country will subside. Already, farmers in Haryana have launched an agitation demanding loan waiver. In Maharashtra leader of the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (a BJP ally), has issued a warning that “If the promises are not kept, the agitation will resume with greater vigour.”
• In Madhya Pradesh there are signs of farmer organisations regrouping to launch a more concerted movement.
• The promises made by Fadnavis and Chouhan and the Union government had not adequately addressed the underlying factors that had forced farmers to take the path of agitation. These leaders have been dictated by political brinkmanship throughout, and this does not help in finding lasting solutions to farmers’ grievances. The current announcements fall in the same bracket.
• The demand for loan waiver came up in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra because Modi himself spearheaded this brinkmanship during the campaign for the UP Assembly elections promising loan waiver for farmers. Such was the rhetoric that Modi said the loan waiver would be the first decision of the new Cabinet. He also said the Union government would contribute towards the expenditure incurred by the loan waiver. The BJP was elected to power in the State and the new government, under Yogi Adityanath, was forced to live up to this rhetoric and announce loan waiver. It is this that triggered the current phase of farmers’ agitations in other States.
• In both the States, the agitation gathered strength not in areas where there was crop failure but in places where crops were abundant but farmers were denied remunerative prices.
• Madhya Pradesh farmers were aggrieved that the State government was propagating falsehoods about the farming sector. The Chouhan government had been claiming a 20 per cent growth in agriculture in the past five years. The government received the Krishi Karman award (excellence in agriculture) five years in a row for this.
• The BJP leadership have tried to underplay the role of the demonetization drive in creating agrarian distress while RBI stated how the demonetization drive and cash shortages have caused panic in the farm sector and suggested policy interventions may be envisaged to arrest the slump in prices.
• BJP's determined refusal or inability to address comprehensively issues pertaining to the farm sector and measures such as loan waiver might bring temporary relief to farmers, larger policy initiatives were required to bring lasting stability to the farm sector.
• The most important thrust of these initiatives and incentives should be to rescue the farming sector from the predations of the middlemen, money lenders, traders of spurious inputs, corporate sector and their interests. This predation has been marching on and on over the past two and a half decades. Governments after governments and political parties after political parties have asserted they understand the dynamics and perils of this predation, but at the level of policy and governance they have all played the facilitator role to the deprivations of these forces. 
• The question is whether any government will show the political will to take on this problem and thus protect the farmer and through that the country itself. As things stand now, there is not much hope for this fundamental course correction.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, 
it cannot save the few who are rich ... John F. Kennedy

My View:

While Modi talks about corruption, black money etc, these lavish celebrations would have costed over Rs.10,000 crores and the bills picked up by central & state PSUs, BJP and its crony businessmen, eventually burdening the common man. This sort of corruption is worse than receiving bribes as quid pro quo. Needless to say every BJP party activist associated with these celebrations will make few lakhs to few millions of rupees, across the nation. It is clear that BJP doesn't have any agenda for alleviating the problems of farmers and rural masses except some quick fix solution and publicizing them as achievements. Gandhi once said "India lives in its 600,000 villages, not just Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta & Madras." While Modi quotes Gandhi & Patel as convenient to him, he is really never bothered about villages and its economics dynamics. Among Indians 60% belongs to lower class & poorer sections, 30% middle class, and 10% upper & rich class. It is clear that Modi is concerned about middle & upper classes only except shedding some crocodile tears once in a while. Modi has wasted 3 years in celebrations, foreign jaunts and hollow publicity. Emulating Congress model of governance (excepting some name & color changes) Modi is sure to pay a bitter price in 2019 elections, similar to that of Vajpayee & Advani in 2004.

Read 'Rural Revolt' in Frontline July 7, 2017

TS and AP demands fresh allocations of Krishna river water.

KWDT II (Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal) II headed by Justice Brijesh Kumar in its award of 2010 allocated, over and above assured waters at 65% dependability allocated by KWDT I by Justice RS Bachavat during 1973, at 75% dependability and entire average availability of 2578 TMC as against 2060 TMC allocated by KWDT I without setting up any mechanism to ensure lower riparian states get their rightful share of waters at all times. This was contested in Supreme Court by AP and TS by an SLP (Special Leave Petition). In India, rivers being a state subject upper riparian states have natural advantages and lower riparian states suffer as reflected by 2015 Krishna river inflows into AP & TS at meager 80 TMC against usual 1000-1500 TMC in a good year. While Maharashtra and Karnataka dams were full AP & TS dams were empty with no crop in Krishna delta unheard over the past 150 years and unable to even meet drinking water needs.

While Bachavat tribunal was considerate towards lower riparian state of AP (including TS) by allowing unallocated and surplus waters to them with the contention they would suffer floods as well as lean year less inflows. While AP and TS were entangled in bifurcation issues, Maharashtra & Karnataka were able to convince Brijesh Kumar tribunal and get entire waters allocated depriving AP and TS (2578-2060=528-201) to the tune of 327 TMC of water. This has dealt deadly blow to several projects under construction to lift Srisailam waters to drought prone Rayalaseema and Mahboobnagar & Nalgonda districts dependent on unallocated surplus waters (while allocated waters are hardly sufficient for Krishna delta and NS Dam command area users).

The objective of Tribunal and River Water Management Board is to regulate upper riparian state(s) and ensure lower riparian state(s) gets their rightful shares of waters at all times.

Riparian rights, briefly are:
1. The right of a riparian owner to appropriate the water is limited to its use for such purpose, to such an extent and in such a way as will not be inconsistent with a similar use by the lower owners.
2. River waters shall be used with in the basin only.
3. The reasonable use of the water by a riparian owner is subject to the downstream riparian owners 'riparian right' to receive waters undiminished in flow and quality.
4. The doctrine of equitable apportionment alone, however, establishes only the equal right of each riparian to an equitable share in the benefits of the river.
5. Whenever new state were to come into existence will be on an "equal footing" with the original states.

Hence TS and AP's contention that consequent to formation of Telangana State during 2014, Krishna waters allocation must start afresh listening to all states contentions afresh including new state of Telangana is consistent with the general principles of riparian rights.However, central government submitting its view as the matter should be apportioned between AP and TS is not only contrary to general principles of riparian rights but also devoid of any merit.

Finally Pattiseema waters diversion can't be shared with Krishna water allottees for the following reasons:-
1. Pattiseema LI scheme diverts Godavari flood waste waters, not allocated waters.
2. Pattiseema is not a gravity flow project but an Lift Irrigation project involving huge capital & operational expenses.
3. Pattiseema is a purely AP state's temporary project and would get closed once Polavaram project becomes operational at a later date.
4. Pattiseema LI scheme was neither funded by Centre nor by Planning Commission.
5. As and when Polavaram becomes operational, quantity of Godavari waters diverted to Krishna basin, will definitely be shared with Krishna riparian rights owners i.e. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.