The crisis of Indian agriculture is manifested in numerous ways, including the rise in farmers’ suicides in recent years. India is one of the countries with the largest acreage growing staple food crops like rice and wheat. It is also one of the largest producers of vegetables in the world. It is ironical then that with 600 million farmers and 200 million farm workers we are unable to feed the hungry in our country.

With this dismal farm scenario the United Nation’s FAO (Food And Agriculture Organisation) has given the call to celebrate the World Food Day on October 16 with the theme “Right to Food”. According to the FAO: “The Right to Food is the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed. With more than 850 million people still deprived of enough food, the right to food is not just the economic, moral and political imperative, but is also a legal obligation”.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s move to allocate Rs 25,000 million to farming at a meeting of the National Development Council, is an obvious indication towards the growing feeling for the need to address the food crises.

Recent development initiatives in the country suggest that there is a systematic attempt to deny the right to food, especially the access to grow food. About 836 million people or 82 per cent of the population, consisting of tribals, Dalits, landless labourers and marginal farmers, are the most vulnerable to the food crises. In Orissa and central India the mining sector is displacing them from their land. From Nandigram in West Bengal to Nandagudi in Karnataka it is the SEZ (Special Economic Zone) that is depriving  farmers of their fertile land.

The Congress-led UPA government came to power with the backing of rural and agro-dependent India. Nevertheless, agriculture could only get a mere two per cent of the budgetary allocation in 2006-07.
Over the last two decades public investment in agriculture has declined drastically. This was at Rs 7,301 crore in 1980-81, but came down to Rs 4,520 crore in 2000-01. The gross capital investment in rural India has declined from 51 per cent to 23 per cent during the same period.

With fewer opportunities in the farm sector, it is only natural that 48 per cent of the farmers want to quit farming in the country. Even in states like Punjab, considered as a model state for agricultural development, farmers want to give up their occupation, as farming becomes a loss making venture.

The erosion of farmer’s confidence is the outcome of the changing political ideology in the country. Neglect of agriculture and rural sector over decades is manifesting in severe malnutrition of women and children. Recent studies have shown that 60 per cent of women and 79 per cent of children are anaemic in India.
India is spending around Rs 80,000 crore annually towards agriculture subsidy. However, much of the money goes to the fertiliser, power and irrigation sectors. It hardly trickles down to small or marginal farmer, nor does it contribute to agricultural productivity.

Recently, a floriculture company near Bangalore got a subsidy of Rs 4 crore to establish its unit. Within three years the unit was closed and shifted to South Africa to graze greener pastures. Similarly, plantation companies got subsidies to the tune of Rs 30 crore for growing vanilla. With $100 billion as foreign exchange reserves, the policy makers think that food self-sufficiency is an outdated concept in an era of global trade, even if it means sacrificing farmers’ lives.

The political economy of agriculture is fine-tuned to bring in windfall profits for the agro business sector. Either it can be the Rs 10,000 million Bt cotton seed market carved-out by the multi-national seed giants or the opening up of the mandis to Cargills, who have purchased wheat at low prices and are now willing to sell it at higher prices.

The reality check of the right to food in India is an indication of  how government policy has denied access to adequate food and deliberate acceleration of the problem by changing policies in favour of cash and export-oriented crops. This has certainly denied small farmers the much needed incentives to grow food crops.

The agrarian crisis is the result of “policy fatigue” rather than “technology fatigue” as claimed by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia. As a result, farmers feel that they have lost their dignity and take their lives in large numbers. The economic, moral and political imperative is to bring back the confidence of farmers, who alone can feed the nation.

(The writer is an organic farmer)