Targeting UPSC CSE

Whether the government should be using the taxpayers’ money to provide subsidies to the farming community in this country. 1. why have successive governments used the exchequer to provide farm subsidies. 2. How large is India’s spending on farm subsidies as compared to those of other countries having substantial interests in agriculture? In 1950 -51                    Seven decades later agriculture’s share in GDP                     45% below 16% the share of dependent workforce nearly 70% almost 50% Farmers consistly faced adverse terms of trade vis-a-vis non farmers. There is a lack of meaningful investment in agriculture which would not only ensures efficient use of resources but could be a crucial step to boost farm incomes. Total investment undertaken in country fell from 18% in 1950s to around 11% by 1980s. More recent data from 2014-15 to 2018 -2019 shows the avera...

 Four issues De-criminalisation of stubble burning Safeguarding Power subsidy Repeal of 3 farm market laws Legal Guarantee of MSP for farm produce Government agreed to not to penalise stubble burning and to safeguard power subsidies. Government should also take in consideration that : Subsidised power and lopsided incentive structures have built cropping patterns that are no longer sustainable.  Large sections of farmers meanwhile continue to languish in debt and fear.  Farmer concerns are not uniform across India. Reforms are necessary to ensure that India has a productive, sustainable and remunerative agriculture sector. The r eports of the National Commission on Farmers , chaired by Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, and other government committees have suggested solutions.  The Centre must engage with the farmers, political parties and States on the economic and  environmental issues at stake.

 Government Procures farm produce at MSP through Food Cooperation of India. FCI is mandated to procure any amount of  produce (notified by CACP), which meets the standard set by government, from the farmer. Issues with procurement: Financial Burden on Government: They incur loss during buying and selling at less cost combined with financial expenses of storage and transportation.  Food wastage. Reduced supply in market due to procurement, causing increase in food inflation which in turn effect customers. Human resource required to man and provide services in FCI godowns. Leakages during transportation from FCI Godowns and PDS outlets. How to deal with the losses when these government-procured stocks are unloaded in the market, as they will invariably incur losses. And if stocks keep piling up, as is the case with wheat and rice today, how do we correct this imbalance in demand and supply?  In that case, either limit the size of procurement or go for price deficiency ...

  Our farmers always want a higher price for their produce, but higher food prices can also bring pains to poor consumers. The art of policymaking is to balance the interest of producers and consumers within reasonable financial resources.  In such a charged environment, rationality often becomes victim to anger and hatred, which does not serve anyone’s purpose, including the farmers’ therefore it is required to look for corrections without repealing all together. A major study at ICRIER conducted with OECD showed that over the period 2000-01 to 2016-17, Indian agriculture was implicitly taxed to the tune of almost 14% of its value, primarily due to restrictive trade and marketing policies, ranging from export controls and stocking limits to the restrictive mandi system. The way to improve farmers’ price realisation, therefore, was to liberate agriculture from these various controls. This has been a long-standing demand of one of the tallest farmer leaders, the late Sharad Jos...

National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. NAFED  was established on the auspicious day of Gandhi Jayanti on 2nd October 1958.HQ at New Delhi. NAFED is an apex organization of marketing cooperatives for agricultural produce in India.

I n all these years since the MSP was given birth to in 1965 through a newly-constituted Agricultural Prices Commission, now renamed as Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices and the Food Corporation of India (FCI), only 6 per cent of farmers and broadly, 6 per cent of the value of agri-produce has benefitted from this system.  NSSO's Situation Assessment survey, 70th round revealed in 2012-13 , Only 6% of farmers sold their produce at MSP, majority of them were from Punjab-Haryana Belt. after that there is no survey available. Asking for making MSP a statutory binding even on the private sector will turn out to be anti-farmer as much of the private trade will shun such a system, leading to chaos.  

 It is not just about minimum support prices but also about the survival of the entire system of public  procurement and distribution of food grains which, despite its drawbacks, continues to provide a modicum of food security to vast numbers of our population. Threat from Northern industrial countries :   Northern industrial countries, namely the US, Canada, EU cannot produce the tropical and subtropical crops in high demand because of climatic reason while they have mountains of surplus grain and dairy product s , and they require export markets for these.  For over two decades, they have put relentless pressure on developing countries to give up their own public procurement systems , insisting that they should buy their food grains from advanced countries, while d iverting their food crop producing land to c ontract farming of export crops that these industrial countries want but cannot produce. Dozens of developing countries including Philippines(mid 1990s) an...