By IANS,
New Delhi: The Communist Party of India Monday said a high growth rate was meaningless unless the government deals with the crisis plaguing agriculture and also accused the government of delaying finalising the food security bill.
Releasing a report “Agrarian Crisis: Life at stake in rural India”, based on survey of 30 districts across eight states, CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan said over two lakh farmers had committed suicide in the country.
“Over 50 percent of country’s population is dependant on agriculture. The development (Gross Domestic Product) rate may go to eight, nine or ten percent but till the time the government deals with the agrarian crisis, it will all remain empty talk,” Bardhan said.
Referring to the political upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt, Bardhan said once people come together and decide to bring about a change, it comes about.
Calling for social transformation in the country, he said farmers should be united and brought together.
Bardhan said the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was finding it difficult to finalise the food security bill. “The government is not willing to pay heed to the concerns of people. When it comes to the common man, the government appears clueless and says it does not have money,” Bardhan said.
He said that the bill was being tossed between the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council (NAC) and the government.
He said the government has not accepted suggestions made by some public-spirited members of the NAC.
“Since when has the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission got a right to veto proposals. But he has done so,” Bardhan said.
He said that land was being taken away from farmers.
“There are several excuses… The corporates are getting into issues concerning farmers and their land,” Bardhan said.
Utsa Patnaik, a former professor of Jawaharlal University, said that the survey was a large attempt at data collection outside the organised structure.
She said while bottom 60 percent of farmers in the country owned only about 11 percent of land in 1970, the real deterioration in the condition of peasantry came after 1990 because of the neo-liberal policies of the government.
Accusing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “and his coterie” of pursuing “pre-determined neo-liberal agenda”, she said “the day was not far when people will rise in revolt.”
“The non-implementation of land reforms or deeply rooted poverty may not construe agrarian crisis. It is the neo-liberal policies of the last 20 years which has made a direct attack on small producers,” she said.
She said with the opening up of economy, more attention was being paid to export of agricultural products and huge chunks of land had been been diverted to export crops from food production.
Patnaik said farmers had faced disastrous fallout of the government not providing minimum support price for certain crops and leaving farmers to the vagaries of market forces. She said while overall production of foodgrains may have improved, the real issue was per capita availability.
She said affordable credit and inputs would help restore viability of production for small farmers.
A member of the survey team told IANS that the report, which is the first phase of study done on the survey, recommends forming production collectives with state support and agrees with the struggles of farmers on issues such as the land acquisition bill.
The function was organised by Joshi-Adhikari Institute of Social Sciences.