Parties should rise above narrow political views

It is rather matter of serious concern that both the TRS and the BJP are locking horns on the issue of paddy procurement. No political party should try to make farmers as pawn for their narrow political gains. They should learn to speak the truth and not try to confuse the farmers. Ministers, MPs and party leaders hitting roads claiming to be farmer-friendly cannot be accepted.

Instead, all political parties should realise that it is time to have a serious introspection of the existing laws and bring changes based on the changing global and local market conditions.

The concept of rationing, fair price shops, government procuring the produce was a necessary measure between 1960s and 70's when the country was facing serious food shortage. The Public Law (PL) 480 was brought in as the total production of food grains in the country was about 50 million tons only.

Those days, the farmers used to store their produce and sell when the market rate was high. So, government made it a crime to store food grains. The MSP given by government used to be less than the market price.

Today the situation has changed. We have around eight to nine crore tonnes of food grains in our godowns. The production has gone up while consumption has come down due to various reasons including availability of variety of alternative food items like eggs, meat, vegetables, fruits and other crops and western junk food.

The production of paddy and wheat has gone up because of availability of water. Even states like Odisha and Chhattisgarh are growing more of paddy than other crops because of better irrigation facilities. Though consumption of rice is very low in North, farmers there are opting for paddy during kharif season.

Unfortunately, in India we do not have a proper and scientific method of crop planning and hence the glut in paddy is there. Export potential is also not high and even the rate in international market is not very attractive. Another problem is in India we are depending more and more on fertilisers and pesticides and this has badly affected the soil strength.

According to findings of international organisations if measures to improve the soil fertility is not taken on war footing, in next 40 years there would be drastic fall in food production. Today soil is live but if don't take corrective measures it will be gone. Already a major part of it has degraded. Its not just for one nation or state it is the global phenomena.

But the political parties whether it be the Centre or states do not focus attention on such issues. They are more interested in announcing some schemes for farmers and claim to be farmer friendly.

The political parties should understand that they need to come with a long-term policy which keeping in view the ground realities and see that the farmers take to alternative crops like oil palm which can get them better market.

They should also focus on drip irrigation, micro irrigation, create better marketing faculties for the produce including agro processing units, more retail chains and increase import cess to discourage imports of agri products.

We have seen that there has been lot of opposition from political parties on increase in retail chains. Instead of brainstorming on such issues, they will go in for sloganeering, drama on roads to hide their political failure and try to garner votes in the name of farmers. They will give lectures on importance of organic farming but will not encourage it. As long as they refuse to come out of their shell and look at things in broader perspective, the farmers will continue to suffer.