How twisted TV debates are vilifying farmers

As the Supreme Court takes suo moto notice, a comparatively longer horrific video clip that has surfaced clearly shows a Union Minister's convoy mowing down peaceful protestors at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh. While protesting farmers were hit from behind, killing four and leaving several injured, another four died in the violence that followed.

While this ghastly incident has caused outrage across the country, it has also exposed the diabolic face of the society wherein all efforts are being by a dominant section of the educated (and the media) to shift the blame on the farmers for stone pelting leading the drivers of the cars to lose balance and hit them. If the videos had not appeared, this biased thinking would have certainly gained acceptance or at least created confusion among a large section of the general public. In fact, the ease at which such kinds of insinuation are being casually thrown at farmers brings out the discrimination, contempt and bitterness that prevail against the farming community.

Call it rural urban divide or a digital divide or reflections of the growing disconnect with the farming population at large, but an underlying feeling of bitterness and indignation is quite visible. In any conversation, you just have to scratch a bit and the bitterness they harbour spills out. Farmers are considered to be a burden on the society, living on freebies and subsidies. "Why are farmers allowed to protest in cities, obstructing traffic and causing inconvenience to people," I am often asked, with some going to the extent of even saying that farmers live on the taxes the middle-class pays.

Often in response to my tweets wherein I share reports of farmers committing suicide, a few trolls go to the extent of retorting: "These people in any case should have died. They are a scum of the society." While it renders me speechless, at the same time it shows the hard feelings and enmity that prevails. Take the case of protesting farmers at the borders of New Delhi, besides being hurled with choices abuses, an effort has also been made to brand the farmers movement as a handiwork of Khalistanis and 'anti-national' forces. As if this is not enough, the more you watch TV debates, the more you get dismayed. Most anchors and panellists, who probably cannot distinguish between wheat and barley plant, are the ones who will tell you about the virtues of the three central laws that the farmers oppose.

The hostility that prevails is the outcome of a hugely discriminatory narrative that has been created. It actually stems from an economic design that relies on sacrificing agriculture for the sake of the industry. It relies on keeping food prices low so as to keep economic reforms viable, to force people from the rural areas to increasingly migrate to cities which are in need of cheap labour. For at least four decades, farm incomes have either remained static or declined. This has kept food prices low for the urban population, and has also kept inflation under control. The latest Situational Assessment Survey 2019 has clearly shown that farm income from crop cultivation alone has come down since the time the last survey was held in 2013. The average income of a farmer has been computed at Rs 27 per day, which I find is less than what a lactating cow can provide. This is primarily because farm gate prices have been deliberately kept low. I have often explained how the wheat price has increased by 19 times in 45 years period, between 1970 and 2015, while the basic pay and DA of government employees had gone up by 120 to 150 times, and that of college and university lecturers/professors by 150 to 170 times in the same period.

For the same reasons, Economic Survey 2016 told us that the average income of farmers in 17 states of India, which means roughly half the country, stood at a paltry Rs 20,000 a year. In other words, farming families were living on less than Rs1,700 a month in half the country. As expected, there was no outrage when I talked of the miserable conditions farmers were living under. Interestingly, government officers get almost Rs 20,000 a year simply as washing allowance. Each of the 11-lakh non-gazetted Railway employees will get a bonus of Rs 17, 171 this year, which is almost equivalent to what farmers earn annually in half the country.

Yet, an impression is created that farmers lead a comfortable life. They don't pay taxes. In reality, despite their meagre incomes, farmers pay indirect taxes on everything they buy. Even when a farm labour buys chappals for Rs30 a pair, they have to pay a GST. And let's not forget, farmers don't get an inflation-linked DA. Even the MSP that the government announces is often less than the prevailing rate of inflation which means even the cost of production is not covered. More so, a Producer Subsidy Equivalent index that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) prepared for the past two decades, Indian farmers have been negatively taxed all these years.

But when some State governments waive farm loans, hell breaks loose on the media. A number of TV shows called for waiving the waiver. But when did you watch a TV show on corporate bad loans, which are several times more? While roughly Rs2 lakh crore of outstanding farm loans have been waived in past five years, more than Rs10 lakh crore of corporate bad loans have been written-off in the past eight years. So much so that a former CEA had gone to the extent of saying that writing-off corporate bad loans leads to economic growth.

This is how seeds of discrimination are deliberately sown against farmers. The contempt and resentment that a large section of the middle-class carries against farmers is borne out of misinformation and twisted facts that are routinely thrown at them. This flawed impression needs to be corrected, a role that the government, the academia, the civil society and the media must undertake. Farmers are not a burden, but in reality are the ones who continue to carry alone the burden of subsidising the nation.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)