farmer debts

In India’s Breadbasket, Mounting Debts Are Driving Farmers to Daily Wage Labour

Very little attention is paid to marginal and small farmers who constitute a substantial chunk of the population in relatively prosperous states like Punjab and Haryana.

Sangrur (Punjab)/Kaithal (Haryana): While the farmers of Punjab and Haryana face opprobrium for burning crop stubble that leads to severe air pollution in Delhi and other parts of north India, there is very little attention paid to their daily grind, particularly the marginal and small farmers who constitute a substantial chunk of the population in these relatively prosperous states that constitute the breadbasket of India. Falling income, mounting debts and high interest rates on loans have driven most of them to daily wages for survival.

In Punjab, 35.4% of farm households fall in the category of small and marginal farmers (holding less than five acres of land), and 65.4% in Haryana. Further, Punjab’s 64.51% rural households are landless, compared to 55.91% in Haryana, against a national average of 56.41%.

Mounting debts in Punjab

Debts are endemic to these small and marginal farmers. “I remember my family being in debt, right from my grandfather’s time,” Harjinder Singh, a 30-year-old farmer who owns two acres of land in Gharachon village in the Bhawanigarh administrative block of Punjab’s Sangrur district, told VillageSquare.in.

He has a debt of Rs 8 lakh – Rs 3 lakh taken from Malwa Gramin Bank and Rs 5 lakh from an arhatiya, one of the commission agents at the mandi (wholesale market), where all crop procurement operations take place. Though the private lender charges 12% interest, and the banks an effective rate of 4% (government provides 3% interest subvention), he relies on the agent, since loan from formal institutions is limited to Rs 3 lakh.

Also read: Farmers’ Losses Mount to Rs 1,000 Crore as October Prices Fall Short of Kharif MSP

Satwinder Singh, a 40-year-old farmer of Jhaneri village, owning three acres of land, has Rs 5.76 lakh loan from three different sources – a bank, a farmers’ cooperative and an agent. “On paper, the loans from the bank and cooperative are for farming, but these are actually for my children’s education and healthcare,” Satwinder Singh told VillageSquare.in. “In the absence of good government schools and hospitals, I have to rely only on private institutions.”

Outstanding loans in Haryana

In Haryana’s Kaithal district, it is no different for Nahar Singh, who owns two acres in Kharodi village of Guhla administrative block, or for Satnarayan Sharma from Peedal village, who owns 0.75 acre.

Nahar Singh has a debt of Rs 7.5 lakh and Sharma a debt of Rs 9.5 lakh, taken from a commission agent, bank and farmers’ cooperative. Both the farmers and their sons work as daily wage labourers for most part of the year, to run their families of four and five respectively.

Also read: Haircuts are Good, Farm Loan Defaults are Bad – the Two-Faced Treatment of Waivers

“My son studied up to class XII on my insistence, but found no jobs,” Sharma told VillageSquare.in.Seeing his brother’s plight, Sharma’s younger son shows no interest in studies and helps his father in his farm.

According to the National Sample Survey Office’s survey of 2013, the average outstanding loan against farm households in Punjab is Rs 119,500 (third highest in the country) and Haryana Rs 79,000 (seventh highest), while the national average is Rs 47,000. About 53.2% farm households in Punjab, and 42.3% in Haryana are in debt, as against the national average of 51.9%.

Inadequate farm income

Several farmers in both the blocks of Punjab and Haryana say that their farm income has fallen as the input costs – fertilisers, pesticides, insecticides, hiring cost of tractors and other farm implements – have grown disproportionately in the past few years.

“If we are growing paddy, which is not what Punjab farmers used to grow a few decades ago, it is because the government procures it at a fixed minimum support price (MSP) and we get an assured income,” Harjinder Singh told VillageSquare.in. “I admit that paddy made us rich, but only till the mid-90s, after which the input costs have gone up significantly while the MSP (minimum support price) has failed to keep pace. Now paddy is ruining us.” MSP is the price the government pays farmers to buy selected crops that are fed into the subsidised public distribution system.

In support of his claims, he said that the price of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) has gone up from Rs 900 a quintal in 2015 to Rs 2,800; and Applaud, an insecticide that cost Rs 700 a litre a year ago, now costs Rs 1,000. But MSP for paddy has gone up from Rs 1,500 in 2015 to only Rs 1,770 a quintal this season.

Farmers turn wageworkers

According to Sukhpal Singh Gill of Punjab Agricultural University, the MSP of wheat and paddy increased at the rate of 2% per annum while the cost of cultivation increased at the rate of 7.9% in Punjab in the past 15 years.

It is true that Punjab and Haryana top the list in average farm household incomes in India. However, Gill pointed out that the annual net income of marginal and small farm households were Rs 72,000 and Rs 1.78 lakh, respectively. Their income is much lower than their debt burden of Rs 1.82 lakh and Rs 2.70 lakh, respectively, for 2016-17.

Also read: Agricultural Loans Worth Rs 59,000 Crore Went to 615 Accounts in One Year

That such farmers are banking on daily wages for survival is evident from the SECC 2011 data, which shows that manual casual labour is the main source of income for 48.03% rural households in Punjab and 42.7% in Haryana. Though these percentages are a little less than the national average of 51.8%, it is a worrying development nonetheless.

Gill said that small farming in particular is no longer a viable occupation as incomes are not sufficient to meet the basic expenses of domestic consumption, healthcare and education.

Lack of policy action

“Neither Punjab nor Haryana has any policy for marginal and small farmers, except for providing free electricity, water and subsidies to buy farm implements,” Gill told VillageSquare.in.

Agriculture policies of both the states have no specific policy prescriptions for small and marginal farmers. Punjab’s 2013 policy lists future course of growth for farmers, particularly the small and marginal and also the agricultural labourers.

Haryana’s policy of 2014 acknowledges “the plight of farmers, particularly small and marginal” and says “a lot needs to be done” about land reforms but all it prescribes are: giving credit at low rate of interest and revisiting rules and procedures for land reforms.

Way forward

Gill pointed at the solutions that the Planning Commission had formulated – farm cooperatives, self-help groups and farmer producer organisations (FPOs) to help the small and marginal farmers in particular.

“The FPOs are in their infancy in Punjab and Haryana where National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), entrusted with the task of promoting them, started working two years ago on a pilot basis,” said Gill.

According to him, an excellent short-term solution could have been the rural job guarantee scheme under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) providing work to distressed farmers.

Also read: Despite Increased Average Income, Farmers’ Debt Remains an Issue

Gill said that the rich and influential farmers of the two states derailed the program, apparently to get cheap labor for their farms. “We conducted studies in Punjab and Haryana in 2010-11 and found that 50% of the villages didn’t have MGNREGA operations,” Gill told VillageSquare.in.

A visit to several villages in Bhawanigarh and Guhla blocks confirmed that MGNREGA works were few and far between. “There has been no MGNREGA work so far this year and very little last year,” Krishan Kumar Gujjar, village council chief of Jhaneri told VillageSquare.in.

In such scenario, there is little hope for the small and marginal farmers in the states that form the food basket of the country.

“Industrialisation of rural areas is the answer and farming should become a part-time profession,” agriculture economist and chancellor of Punjab University Sardar Singh Johl told VillageSquare.in. Gill said that non-farm employment would be a major long-term solution but there is no such policy in view.

Prasanna Mohanty is a senior journalist based in New Delhi.

This article was originally published on Village Square. Read the original article.

The Missing Women Farmers at the ‘No-Confidence March’ in Delhi

While three-fourths of all women in the country are associated with agricultural work, women accounted for only about 15 of the 1,500 farmers gathered at the march.

New Delhi: The All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), comprising 200 farmers’ organisations from across the country, organised a march from Mandi House to Parliament Street in New Delhi on July 20. Around 1,500 farmers from different parts of India gathered to show “no confidence” in the Narendra Modi government for betraying farmers over the minimum support price (MSP) increase and other unfulfilled election promises.

Women, however, were conspicuous by their absence.

Charanjeet Kaur from the district of Barnala in Punjab was one of the only 15-odd women present at the march. “The three of us travelled a long way to be here,” she said, gesturing at her two female companions. They sat on the pavement at Barakhamba Road among crowds of male farmers, confident and determined. “We travelled in a train coach filled with 200 people. There was barely any place to stand. But we came.”

Credit: Bani Bedi/The Wire

Her companion Surinder Pal spends over eight hours a day working in the fields, on land owned by the male members of her family. When asked why the three of them decided to come, she said, “No matter what we do, we never get paid properly for it. The government has made too many empty promises to us.”

“Farmers’ issues affect us deeply. As women, we have different responsibilities. We have our children and households to take care of, as well as our work on the fields. When my husband died, he had been in deep debt and our land was taken away,” Charanjeet added.

Over three-fourths of women in India today are engaged in farming occupations. This proportion is higher than that of men. In addition, women make up 74% of the country’s rural workforce. However, only about 12.7% of farmland is owned by women. The government does not recognise agricultural workers without a land title as farmers, which has dire consequences for women. They cannot access credit for farming, receive subsidies or access government schemes for farmers. In short, they labour with little support from the government.

The Hindu Succession Act was amended in 2005 to award daughters the equal right to their parents’ property. But in practice, they are not considered equals when it comes to land inheritance. They face opposition both from officials as well as from their own families. The cultural belief that women shouldn’t own farmland is often internalised by women themselves. Landesa’s research shows that when women have rights over the land they work on, they gain greater bargaining power in their households and community.

Narinder Singh, who had come from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh to attend the march, was distressed about his daughter. “She drives the tractor on the field, for which she is being harassed,” he said, while walking on Barakhamba Road with a black flag over his shoulder. “Some men, who seem like gangsters, harass her. We have filed FIRs and been to the police station many times yet the police keep asking us for more and more money. This is all because my daughter drives a tractor.”

Uttar Pradesh has one of the highest gender crime rates in the country, besides having among the lowest sex ratios – 912 women to every 1,000 men. The practice of driving tractors has traditionally been reserved for men. In many areas in India, women are held back from driving tractors or handling the plough.

Charanjeet spoke of the women who were compelled to work in more difficult conditions when they became the only breadwinners in their families. “I know women whose husbands committed suicide when they faced crushing debt. These women have no opportunity to mourn. They have to ensure sustenance for their children and fight for compensation from the government. They take photos of their husbands to show the officials.” Compensation is to be given to the families, she said, but it is barely ever given without a fight. Farmers’ groups inevitably have to intervene to ensure at least some amount is disbursed.

Farmer suicides have left thousands of women widowed in India. They are then compelled to take on more responsibility, the increased economic burden adding to their domestic burden. They are plagued with issues of accessing childcare support when they work in the fields, trying to get compensation, lack of psychological support and providing for the family. Their husband’s land is often taken away.

Charanjeet Kaur. Credit: Bani Bedi/The Wire

When Charanjeet told me that a fundamental problem among many men in the villages of Punjab is nasha, or intoxication, the men standing on her right interjected. “Many women do it too,” they insisted.

At this, she stood up defiantly in front of the ten men and straightened her dupatta. “Only women with money and easy access do it. Most of us have seen the men in our family passed out and missing work. They sell their land, the utensils of the house – everything they can get their hands on – to pay for drugs. Once again the distressed women of the family have to take on additional responsibilities and provide for the children.”

As vice-president of the Istri Jagriti Manch, Charanjeet has been helping women with various problems they face. “Women who are being harassed, or have been raped, or are fighting for their rights come to us. We help raise their voices and we protest,” she explained. The organisation operates in rural and urban areas around Barnala, Sangrur, Nawahshahr, Jalandhar and Patiala in Punjab.

Women often face sexual harassment in mandis. From the moment they enter the fields to the time the crop is to be sold, they are faced with the crushing double reality – they are farmers, and they are women.

Farmers’ groups around the country are demanding the implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission. In 2011, as a member of Rajya Sabha, M.S. Swaminathan introduced a private members’ Bill in parliament: the Women Farmers’ Entitlement Bill 2011. Its provisions would give women land ownership rights, access to legal credit, water rights, funds for various support services and help with inputs.

The AIKSCC stated last October that women were the backbone of Indian agriculture and with due recognition, they could help pull the sector out of crisis. Their official website shows support and recognition of women farmers in various places. An all-women parliament was conducted by the organisation on 22 November, 2017 as a part of the Kisan Mukti Sansad on Parliament Street. At the July 14 working group meeting of the organisation last Saturday, representatives from many of its member organisations showed up. Female presence was close to zero.

Social activist Medha Patkar seemed unfazed by the dearth of female representation at the MSP Dhoka March. Emphasising the importance of women in agriculture, she said that farmers’ issues are absolutely women’s issues and women make up two-thirds of the workforce in the sector. When asked if the lack of women at the march points to a cultural issue, she told The Wire, “It is an organisational issue. This was a last-minute event organised very fast. It’s not like there is a divide. We have brought women with us.” She came to Delhi with around ten women to attend the march. “We have many women in our movement – fisherwomen, farmers, field labourers and so on. Their numbers will continue to increase over time. In the future, there will be more,” she added optimistically.

As farmers’ movements gather momentum over the next few months, the participation of women at these protests will be closely watched.

Bani Bedi is an intern at The Wire.