Page 40 - #letter to son

#SangamNiti DAYLIGHT
across the country. With the mainstream and neo-media somewhat
blinded by the neon lights of big cities, agri-communities took protests
off the fields and right into the media hubs to highlight the extent of
their agrarian distress.

It is paradoxical that almost 60-70 per cent of India resides in its
villages and is engaged in the agri-ecosystem, yet the sector is the most
vulnerable among all the major economic constituents. Research has
shown that the agri sector is characterised by instability in incomes
because of various types of risks involved in production, market forces
and prices. The National Commission of Farmers (2006), chaired by M.S.
Swaminathan, a towering figure in India’s Green Revolution, pointed
out that something ‘very serious is happening in the countryside.’

The principal reason for farm crises can be determined from how
cultivators and sharecroppers have been demanding remunerative prices
and freedom from debt. For the first time ever, farmers’ movement is
not simple complaining. It is offering a clear solution. For the first time
ever, the farmers’ movement has narrowed down its charter of demands
to just two operational points. It appears that farmers are reading Dale
Carnegie.

Importantly, while crop production is always at risk because of several
vagaries, the conflict of remunerative prices, fuelled in no small measure
by ‘middlemen profiteering’, has added to the farm financial distress.
Also, the dominance of informal sources of credit, mainly through
usurious moneylenders, and lack of capital for short- and long-term
loans have resulted in the absence of stable incomes and profits.

This has led to severe indebtedness and defaults.

The concept of debt is as old as the sun rising every morning. In his
book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, author and anthropologist David
Graeber constructs the historical context around the idea of debt,
starting from the first recorded debt systems in the Sumer civilisation
around 3500 BC. It is no coincidence that the book traces the origin of
debt to principally one segment of the community: farmers.

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