Let the ongoing protest not fester into a wound that becomes gangrenous

“This protest could become a golden opportunity for PM Narendra Modi if he decides to turn the tables — offer ‘Modi ki guarantee’ to the farmers as well. Accept their demands; make them feel victorious. There is nothing that an Indian farmer won’t give when he feels heard and honored.”

It is the kinnow season, and the fruit is sold at the doorstep for Rs 50 a kilo. Well, nothing out of the ordinary for most of the readers who are consumers. But this year’s kinnow crop has a story of toil and tears. The fruit is selling at Rs 3-10 in the Abohar mandi, which is probably the biggest kinnow trading place in the world. What is being sold by the farmer for Rs 3 is being bought at Rs 50 by the consumer from the rehriwala in Chandigarh. If this anomaly does not call for a strident agitation, what does? And that’s what is happening at the Punjab–Haryana border.

Verghese Kurien ensured that all that was sold by a farmer was bought by an organization that made profit and distributed it in terms of a better price for the farmer’s produce.

Gurpreet Singh of Patti Sadiq village in Abohar tehsil of Fazilka district wants answers to this basic question. The Union Government had honored him with a national award for his successful farm diversification efforts. There cannot be a better example of a progressive and articulate farmer than Gurpreet, who has done his masters and then bachelors in education and yet chose to be a full-time farmer. He diversified into kinnow from the wheat-paddy cycle, keeping 20 of the 27 acres of his ancestral land just for the fruit crop. But he is thoroughly disappointed.

All he has got is Rs 10.30 per kg of kinnow, which is just one-fifth of what the consumer pays the retailer. Punjab Agro, which entered the market in November-December, Gurpreet claims, has skipped his farm and bought the fruit from political influential people at the rate of Rs 12.60 per kg. His claims are unverified. But the fact is this year, the crop is good. And suddenly, all the buyers who had paid Rs 27/kg last year, encouraging the farmers to grow kinnow vigorously, have vanished. It could be because of higher import duty levied by a neighboring country. But these reasons are just excuses for the ears of the farmer, who is reduced to penury for the fault of having a bumper crop.

The fact remains that what is bought at one end of the chain for Rs 3 is sold at the other at Rs 50 within a distance of 300 km. The Punjab farmers who are protesting at the Haryana border are seeking a correction to this fundamental flaw in the Indian agri-commodity market. The city slickers who incessantly attack Punjab’s farmers for demanding a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP) and those who justify the abominable use of drones against protesters should pause and wonder: will they sell their products or services below the cost price? Will they suffer seeing their products being resold for 5-18 times the original price without an iota of value addition in their own neighborhood?

Gurpreet, the progressive farmer who cares for his land, soil and water table and is concerned about the water-guzzling paddy crop, has a fairly simple solution — marketing and value addition through research and development. The Bharat Ratna for agriculture scientist Dr MS Swaminathan could not have come sooner (this time around, Gurpreet has not made money from his crop, going by the Swaminathan comprehensive cost formula). But there is another greater Ratna of Bharat, who needs to be talked about in the context of Gurpreet’s concerns about marketing — Verghese Kurien.

He ensured that all that was sold by a farmer was bought by an organization that made profit and distributed this profit in terms of a better price for the farmer’s produce. Can there be a greater model for agricultural marketing than Amul? What Amul’s producer-shareholders have received is what every Indian farmer deserves. Unless the produce is bought at the farmgate at a profit, the Indian farmer will be reduced to begging for government intervention and legal guarantees.

India is the biggest buyer of edible oil with an annual import bill pegged at $20 billion, yet sunflower seed farmers had to block roads at Shahabad near Kurukshetra in Haryana last year to get what is their due — the MSP of Rs 6,400 per quintal at which the government was supposed to buy the crucial commodity that burns a hole in the consumer’s pocket. That year, farmers sold their mustard crop to traders at Rs 4,400 per quintal when the MSP was supposed to be Rs 5,450 (Nous Indica: ‘Pamper the farmers, make them rich’)

Every year, there are some farmers who dump their produce on the roads or run tractors over vegetables or fruits to make visuals that would pry open the eyes of the government. They obviously don’t find a way out other than the MSP backed by a legislation and assured procurement. The pro-government economists and commentators who talk about a fiscal disaster and throw numbers totaling many lakhs of crores of rupees do not even understand that the consumer is already paying those many lakhs of crores and much more without farmers getting any of it. If the market is playing foul, it’s the responsibility of the government to discipline it, offering sustainable profits to the producer. And if he does not get it, he will block the road at an opportune moment when the government is most vulnerable. It is obvious that the empowered farmers of Punjab are talking for all their brethren across the country and trying to corner the government, making it commit the blunder of tear-gassing them using drones and suffer a public relations disaster. This is legitimate oppositional politics. Sadly, a protester died of a heart attack at the Shambhu border on Friday, adding to the government’s discomfiture in the run-up to the polls.

At the same time, this protest could become a golden opportunity for PM Narendra Modi if he decides to turn the tables — offer ‘Modi ki guarantee’ to the farmers as well. Accept their demands; make them feel victorious. There is nothing that an Indian farmer won’t give when he feels heard and honored. Let the protest not fester into a wound that becomes gangrenous.

(The author is editor-in-chief of Tribune India)