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FIFTH
COLUMN
Multinational
Myths
What the
Indian farmer needs is foreign technology, not political gimmickry
By
Tavleen
Singh
Farmers are
suddenly hot politically. So hot that our current Parliament session began
with Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav fighting over who should speak
first for India's farmers. Yadav claimed first right on grounds of his
peasant origins but if he had anything more worthwhile to say than Sonia
nobody knows. It was the polemics that became the floor show. And if this
was not cabaret enough we then had Parliament's most famous windbag, Renuka
Chaudhury, driving to Parliament House on a tractor and effectively trivialising
the issue. The sight of her in green silk and gold anklets mounted on
a tractor was considered more newsworthy than anything said inside the
House. Most Indian farmers cannot afford tractors, so this was a cruel
piece of symbolism but Ms Windbag did India's farmers a favour by inadvertently
drawing attention to how little even MPs know about their problems. The
gist of the Congress' case, and that of others who speak for farmers,
appears to be that cheap agricultural imports will kill the Indian farmer.
 Interesting.
Especially when you consider that neither our MPs nor our environmentalists-in
their constant battle against multinationals-appear to have noticed that
the Indian farmer has already been killed. He has been destroyed by policies
so bizarre that much of his produce gets eaten by rats in government warehouses
or rots before it can be used. To give you only one statistic: India wastes
more fruits and vegetables (40 per cent of annual production) than the
United Kingdom eats in a year.
This shocking
waste in a country where nearly half our people live on less than a dollar
a day is due to government policies so mistaken that in the interests
of helping the farmer they have actually harmed him. Since this has nothing
to do with foreigners, multinationals or the WTO, it hardly ever arouses
passion or polemics.
It is time
that it did. First, allow me to paint you a picture of the average Indian
farmer. He owns between three and five acres of land and one acre earns
him Rs 5,000 a year on an average and Rs 10,000 if it is a really good
year. Even if you take the higher figure and double it, you can see the
pavement shopkeepers-and perhaps beggars in Mumbai-make more money. So
when rich businessmen and learned policy makers talk of the urgent need
to tax agricultural income they should keep in mind that very few farmers
earn enough to enter the tax bracket. We also hear a great deal about
the subsidies on fertilisers, electricity and water that farmers supposedly
enjoy. The truth is that there is no rural area in India that has guaranteed
supplies of electricity or sufficient water for irrigation. And 40 per
cent of our villages is still not connected with roads. Have you ever
heard an uproar in Parliament over this outrageous state of affairs?
No, because
farmers' problems appear to be uninteresting unless we can drag multinational
companies and the WTO into the discussion. It is not just MPs of socialist
bent who rage against this mythical foreign invasion but even non-governmental
organisations which screech constantly about preserving our "bio-diversity".
Talk to a farmer, though, and he will tell you that what is desperately
needed in the farm sector is foreign technology: new seeds, new pesticides
and new farming methods. We do not have them because in the past 50 years,
government policies have emphasised only the importance of wheat and rice.
Our agricultural universities have concentrated their research here as
well so other crops-oilseeds, pulses, maize-have suffered terribly.
Farmers
need new technologies wherever they come from. When Pepsi Cola wanted
potatoes and tomatoes grown in Punjab they found local quality poor. They
brought in new technologies to produce better crops and the farmers benefited.
Foreign
fruits and vegetables are now flooding our bazaars but there is no reason
why Indian farmers should not be able to compete if they are provided
the necessary infrastructure: roads, cold storages and modern means to
transport goods. They also need credit and crop insurance, something our
nationalised financial institutions have miserably failed to provide.
In Delhi
and Mumbai liberalisation is a fashionable word but the Indian farmer
continues to be in the clutches of a state-controlled market. Ask a farmer
what needs to be done about the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and he
will tell you it needs to be abolished. This year FCI godowns were bursting
at the seams with double the stock they need (42.25 million tonnes of
rice and wheat against a requirement of 24.30 million tonnes). They did
not want more foodgrain. Farmers were forced to make distress sales but
nobody talks about freeing the market. There is then much to talk about
in Parliament but we need a serious discussion, not a cabaret.
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Ayodhya
is an issue that is pre-determined. And it matters little in the present
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