This is a story which rarely gets to the front page headlines. This
is a story which does not bring visibly angry TV anchors shout at the
ruling party spokespersons for the government’s failure to bring down
the soaring prices. This is a story of dried tears, when farmers in
distress are left with only a Hobson choice – to throw away their
produce in anger on the roads.
First the story of tomato. Prices of tomato had crashed across the
country – from Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh to Maharashtra, to Andhra
Pradesh and Karnataka. Reports Financial Express (April 2,
2016): “A bumper tomato crop has led to a fall in the prices of tomato
across Nashik and Pune districts in Maharashtra leading to despair among
farmers who resorted to dumping the commodity on the roads in protest.”
The Hans India published from Hyderabad (Feb 16, 2016) said:
“Tomato growers in the Nalgonda district are in distress as prices have
plummeted to as low as less than Rs 3 per kg due to a glut in arrivals.”
If you noticed, the two news reports are spread over a three month
period — February to April – when the tomato crop hits the market in
central and south India.
If you think 2016 has been an unusually bad year for tomato farmers
when over-production of tomato led to an unprecedented glut, hold your
breath. The story is the same in the previous five years – 2015, 2014,
2013, 2012 and 2011. Let’s first look at a news report from The Hindu
(Aug 13, 2015): Price drop – angry farmers throw away tomatoes. This
report was Chikkamagaluru town in Karnataka. A year earlier, in 2014, The Hindu
had reported: Crash in tomato prices comes as a shock to farmers …
while farmers in the villages of Tumkur district (in Karnataka) are
getting 60 to 80 paise per kg of tomato, consumers in the city are
buying it for around Rs 10 per kg. Another report in The Times of India
(Oct 30, 2014) stated: Tomato prices have dropped to Rs 2 per kg from
Rs 40 per kg in the Nashik (in Maharashtra) wholesale market over the
past few days, triggering speculation of a state-wide cascading effect.
Remember the stock markets crash in August 2015 when Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley assured the market nerves by saying the government is
keeping a close tab, and attributed the crash to global factors. He held
a press conference during the day and set up a group to monitor the
developments. But when it comes to farmers, and that too when prices
have been crashing year after year, I have never seen the Finance
Minister step out to help the farmers in distress.
Coming back to tomato prices, I am aware that tomato is not a crop
that has the capability to bring down an elected government but that is
no reason to remain indifferent to farmer’s sufferings. The hard work a
farmer puts in cultivating tomatoes gets ruined by an unexpected crash
in prices. Economists may call it as an outcome of supply and demand
situation but the question that needs to be asked is where is the fault
of farmers who invested in tomato cultivation? This year, a large number
of farmers in the tomato growing belt – extending to 10,000 hectares –
in Bemetera district of Chhattisgarh had reportedly left the tomato crop
unharvested as it was not even worth it to spend money on plucking and
packaging.
The story of tomato price debacle was followed by a crash in the
prices of onions. After three tumultuous years when onion retail prices
literally shot through the roof forcing the government, following a
media outcry, to take a number of steps to bring down the prices, there
is no one this year to wipe the tears of the farming community. Even an
overtly alert media, which starts screaming every time onion market
prices go up by 25 to 30 per cent, remained conspicuously quiet when it
came to onion prices dropping to as low as 30 paise a kg. The plight of
onion farmers wasn’t enough to shake up the media, which otherwise
remains hyper-sensitive to anything related to onion prices.
As early as in February, reports of onion prices on the downslide had started appearing. In Feb, The Times of India
reported: “The average wholesale onion prices fell to a two-year low of
Rs 700 a quintal at the markets of Nashik due to excess production.
Prices had been steadily falling for a week now, heightening worries of
farmers who cannot hold on to this perishable commodity till prices
stabilize.” On April 13, India Today stated that onion prices had crashed to 30 paise a kg in Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh. And a few days back, on May 13, this Time of India
had a more heart touching report: “Ravindra Madhikar is yet to get over
the shock of earning only Rs 175 after selling 450 kg of small onions
in the Lasur wholesale market. “I used to wonder why farmers take the
drastic decision of ending their lives. But after Wednesday’s deal, I am
also feeling suicidal.” Madhikar is an onion producer in his early
thirties from Gangapur taluka of Aurangabad district in Maharashtra.
 |
| Image courtesy : thehindu.com |
I can understand that this year onion is not bringing tears in the
eyes of urban consumers but is that what the supply demand equation is
all about? If the consumers get hit the media goes on an overdrive but
when onion farmers suffer the media remains quiet. While this urban
media bias is worrying the resulting indifference by the Ministry of
Agriculture as well as the Ministry of Consumer Affairs remains
baffling. A year before, in May 2015, the government had provided a
corpus of Rs 500-crore for setting up a Price Stabilization Fund to
support market interventions for price control of perishable
agri-horticultural commodities during 2015-2017, I didn’t see any
initiative to help the farmers in distress.
Since the Price Stabilization Fund is initially aimed at undertaking
price control operations for onions and potatoes, I thought the crash in
onion prices was a fit case to help onion farmers to be paid the
difference between the selling price and the market price. But I soon
realized this is not the intended objective of the Price Stabilization
Fund. It’s only objective is to procure onions directly from farmers or
farmers organizations at the farm gate or mandi levels at the
time when inflation is inching upwards so as to make it available
cheaper to the consumers. But when the prices crash, farmers are left
alone so as to allow them to quietly wipe their tears.
source: abplive.in
No comments:
Post a Comment