Centre Must Introspect And Act On Dhankhar’s Wake-Up Call And Revitalise Agriculture By Shedding Its Hatred Against Farmers

The gridlock of an artificial boundary that has been created between the farming population and the government has to be opened up as quickly as possible. The barricades need to go away, both physically as well as that in the mind

In an atmosphere where protesting farmers have been called all kinds of derogatory names, and often hurled heaps of abuses on the social media, what the Vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar said the other day at an Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) function, and that too in front of the Union Agriculture Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, certainly came as a whiff of fresh air.

Urging the government to consider farmers’ request regarding the Minimum Support Price (MSP) positively, he said: “Our mindset should be positive; we should not create obstacles by thinking that giving the farmer this price will have negative consequences. Whatever price we give to farmers, the nation will benefit five times over ... Those who say that giving our farmers a fair price for their produce would cause a disaster, I do not understand why.”

In an obvious reference to protesting farmers, he said these people need to be embraced and not pushed away. By creating obstacles and unnecessary hurdles at every step, the demands of farmers remain unresolved for long.

While the Vice-president poured his heart out, even questioning the Agriculture Minister as to why the Centre was not holding a dialogue with farmers, there was a deafening silence in social media.

The troll went quiet as if it was hit by a storm. A storm it surely was. After all, these were the words of a person holding the second highest constitutional position in the country.

Whatever be the reasons that prompted him to speak his mind, he has certainly pricked the nation’s consciousness.

There are definitely some serious questions that need to be answered apart from grave doubts that need to be erased, first and foremost. These are the hard questions that need to be asked, but only a positive government response can assuage the feeling of dismay and despondency, and repair the growing mistrust.

A newspaper editorial had summed it up appropriately: ‘while Dhankhar promises open doors, the roads leading to those doors remain barricaded, both literally and figuratively. Farmers, once hailed as the backbone of the nation, are treated as obstacles rather than stakeholders in India’s development’.

The farmers protest, continuing for almost four years now, is certainly a manifestation of an organised failure by turning a deaf ear to some of the genuine demands that the agitating farmers have been repeatedly raising over the years. In the absence of a dialogue, the stalemate thus continues. ‘The government’s silence has only deepened the mistrust, making a peaceful resolution seem like a distant dream’.

A nation cannot alienate its own people. As I have often said, farmers are not a burden on the society; they are partners in progress. They too are entrepreneurs who have the capability to boost the nation’s economy. They can easily turn wealth-creators. All they need is an enabling environment, and an emphatic government that has ears to the ground. The gridlock of an artificial boundary that has been created between the farming population and the government has to be opened up as quickly as possible. The barricades need to go away, both physically as well as that in the mind.

This is absolutely essential, because as Dhankhar said, the emphasis should be to bring the people together, exhibit confidence by removing, step by step, the mistrust, with the underlying intention being to unify the nation.

Moreover, let’s not forget. Whether it was during the pandemic when the GDP had slumped, with only agriculture emerging as the bright star and turning out to be the sole saviour, or at a time when economic growth had slowed down to 5.4 per cent in the second quarter of FY 25, agriculture and allied sectors rallied hard to register a growth rate of 3.5 per cent, up significantly from a low growth period when agriculture continued to slog along, registering a rise of only 0.4 per cent to 2.0 percent in FY 24-25. Treating farming as nothing short of a burden on the nation’s economy, the misguided challenge therefore to offload the burden, and do it as quickly as possible, emanates from a flawed economic thinking that has kept agriculture deliberately impoverished all these years.

While the world is now rethinking its economics, and surely retracting on the over-hyped excitement from globalisation, and increasingly setting up protectionist measures, and also gradually questioning austerity measures that has led to yawning inequality, India is still far behind when it comes to pressing the reset button. It has to realise that business as usual is not the way forward.

As I had written way back in 2021, agriculture is certainly crying for a change. Instead of borrowing the failed agricultural marketing reforms from other nations, protesting farmers have given us a great opportunity to redesign and come up with a desi version of agriculture reforms where economic policies are tuned to country’s needs rather than adopted by cut and paste. More so, given the reverse migration trend the country is witnessing presently, turning agriculture economically viable is the only pathway to achieve the vision of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas.

It will also reduce the palpable tension of creating more employment opportunities in the urban centres. Whether we like it or not, agriculture alone has the ability to reboot the economy. The sooner we realise this the better it will be for the country. Why I say so is because what the economists fail to see is that if more income were to flow into the hands of farmers, more will be the rural demand, which will eventually turn out to be a rocket dose for the economy.

Perhaps, and I seriously hope so, Dhankhar’s call for revitalising agriculture, by first pushing away the heightened levels of mistrust, hatred and scorn against farmers, will trigger a silent change in government’s own thinking towards farmers and farming. A change will definitely come when people in power begin to question the powers that be.

And as the Vice-president said, if it was Sardar Patel, who unified the nation then, it is Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s opportunity to do likewise.

Given his impressive credentials, Chouhan can surely do it by first building bridges of amity between warring farmers and an indifferent and resistant polity.

It isn’t as difficult as it may seem so. And remember what Nelson Mandela had once said: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

(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)