Farmers play a very significant role in the Indian financial sector. People treat farmers as they are crucial members of society. The crop growers are the section of the population who gets neglected the most.
India has always been a land of farming. The history of farming in India dates back to the era even before the Indus valley civilization. Farmers play a very significant role in the Indian financial sector. People treat farmers as they are crucial members of society. Despite this, the condition of agriculturists has always been dire. They are the section of people who are exploited by every means. They are the most ignorant population in the country. The sector has not only met the needs of hunger of the 1.3 billion population of India but has also contributed to employment in large numbers. About 55 percent, which is more than half of the population, derives its daily needs from the farming sector. The agricultural sector has a very pivotal role in alleviating poverty from the nation and feeding the needs of many Indians.
The times before independence, the farming practices were very traditional, giving significantly less yield to them. The most crucial contribution of land reform was abolishing the landlord system and giving lands to the growers. The farmers sighed in relief. After gaining independence, the five-year development planned focused on the farming sector, but there was no better development.
During the sixties, the cultivators’ condition improved after witnessing the White revolution and the Green Revolution. Lal Bahadur Shastri introduced the white Revolution. The crucial motive of the plan was uplifting the conditions of the farmers by launching milk co-operatives. To encourage the growers to adopt new techniques for farming, the government initiated an incentive price policy. Later it followed the Green Revolution, which enters in by Indira Gandhi. Mexico introduced it with advanced farming technologies, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and high yielding wheat seeds from Mexico. It brought a very great change to the farmers’ financial status, mainly in the Punjab and Haryana region. The cultivators of the states of Punjab and Haryana did not look back.
People showed the advanced farmers’ image using a tractor for agriculture to the world, but the reality varied. There was no equivalence between the farmer’s income and the increase in production. Though the production skyrocketed, the condition of the cultivators was still the same. The introduction of the Agricultural Price Commission with the objectives to ensure profitable prices to the producers, abolishing the landlord system, bringing new technologies to the farmers, and investing in agricultural research were few initiatives taken by the government of Indian.
The arrival of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1991 began shifting the focus of the government from all over the world to the co-operate sector. This thing deprived the growers of getting a benefit from the liberalizing trade policies. Many European countries and America started building a heap of a mountain of food. This situation brought competition among the nations and led to reductions in tariffs for allowing easy imports and exports. These things affected farmers severely. The attention while making policies is to select from the welfare of farmers to the other section of society. This process is continuing till now, and therefore the suicide rate of agriculturists had stuck.
By Debnath Saheli