Back Love of the land
| The Green Revolution effectively proved how a good combination of brawn and brain can catalyse change. |
A “country of 1.1 million people, we are not devoting adequate attention to food security issues, and have narrowed down our food basket to just two or three crops.”
Dr M.S. Swaminathan
Rasheeda Bhagat
It is with introspection and “sadness” that eminent agricultural scientist Dr M.S. Swaminathan, founder chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, talks about the state of agriculture in India today, as he looks back to the scenario in pre-Independent India. He thinks we, as a “country of 1.1 million people, are not devoting adequate attention to food security issues, and have narrowed down our food basket to just two or three crops. ”
Excerpt from an interview:
While Indian economy is booming, the state of Indian agriculture demands introspection. What was the situation like in 1947? Was the Indian farmer much better off then?
In 1947, our population itself was 350 million, of which two-thirds or almost 70 per cent were farmers; that gives us 200-250 million people in farming. But now we are 1.1 billion and unfortunately the proportion of people in farming hasn’t come down. In other countries diversification of employment opportunities in rural areas happened. The Chinese had a two-pronged strategy on farm and non-farm income, right from the time Deng Xiaoping started his reforms, because they couldn’t give land to everybody. Also, land in China is still socially owned; in our case it is individually owned.
As a consequence of population growth and lack of diversification of livelihood opportunities, the pressure on land has increased, average farm-holding size is going down. More and more marginal and sub-marginal farmers of one acre or one hectare have become predominant. And it is now becoming very difficult for them, particularly in dry farming areas.
Despite the work done in the various Plans, only 40 per cent of the country has assured irrigation, 60 per cent is still rain-fed, and our rainfall is so skewed. We get most of the rain in 100 hours; so it is either floods or droughts. And water harvesting has not become a habit, although in olden days in Tamil Nadu you found tank conservation of water. Almost every village developed a tank which was managed by the community. As a young boy I’ve seen this in villages in the Kumbakonam area. Before the monsoon people would get together, de-silt the tank, keep it ready and store water.
But today youngsters are no longer interested in agriculture …
The farm size has become small, livelihood opportunities in non-farm sectors have not grown; of course there is the Khadi and Village Industries Commission but no integrated programme on non-farm employment. Naturally, educated youth feel farming has no future and like to go away from villages. Long ago Gandhiji had said that the worst form of brain drain is the drain of brains from the village to the town. Not from India to the US but from the village to the town. Somehow agriculture was considered to be a profession which required only brawns and no brains. But the Green Revolution was a good combination of how brawn and brain can catalyse the change.
In those days what was the average landholding size?
In the earlier days of zamindars there were a number of tenants, sharecroppers and the holdings were large — 100 to 200 acres. After Independence we went in for land reforms and one of the important components of land reforms is the small farm size.
What were the main crops then?
The food crops were not much more different in that we had rice, wheat, millets… except that we had a more diversified system like jowar, bajra, and so on and Tamil Nadu had so many other millets.
But millets consumption has really fallen…
That is because the PDS system provides only wheat and rice. In the National Commission of Farmers we have urged that the food security basket should be widened and the PDS should offer all grains. For instance, in Karnataka they are very happy with ragi. And these are nutritious grains.
We have narrowed down the food security basket to a couple of crops. If something goes wrong with them, we’ll be in serious difficulty. Unfortunately, the crisis now has become worse because of the global trend to divert grains for fuel — ethanol production. Already the international price of maize has gone up enormously. Recently the World Food Programme chief issued a warning that hunger will increase, because now food prices have gone up by 50 per cent compared to a few years ago.
With a population of 1.1 billon I feel we are not giving enough attention to food security issues.
What does it mean for a person like you who has devoted his life to Indian agriculture to see hungry people in India today?
A lot of hungry people. We have the largest number of hungry people.
So how do you feel?
That is the unfortunate part… we’ve been talking about what I call Mission 2007 for many years now. That by August 15, 2007, we should at least achieve Mahatma Gandhi’s goal of a hunger-free India. At the time of Independence, Gandhiji was in Noakhali and had made a statement to both India and Pakistan that your first duty is to reduce hunger… because god is bread to the poor. But in the last 60 years, what has happened? Of course the government has taken steps, including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme. But it is an employment of last resort because it is unskilled employment at minimum wage; what the World Bank calls ‘one dollar a day’. It will keep people alive but won’t take them out of the poverty trap. It is not enough, unless you have a shift from skilled to unskilled labour.
Also, now people watch on TV screens huge disparities between the rich and the poor, earlier they didn’t know… but today even the smallest village has a TV. So the frustration of the poor farmer only increases...
Yes, the information age has brought home to the poor that this world is very cruel to them, I agree with you.
What was the farm output in those days?
It was low and just enough for people, what you call subsistence farming because the land and the soil were both hungry and thirsty. Hungry, because there was not enough nutrition and soils had been ploughed and cultivated for centuries. Also, at that time there was no irrigation water, and farmers had to either depend on rains or lift-irrigation fromtanks. But productivity was about one tonne per hectare for rice from the available soil fertility.
What is the optimum output now?
It varies from area to area but in Punjab a farmer can get about 4-5 tonnes of rice and about 5 tonnes of wheat per hectare from the same land, so with both crops about 10 tonnes per hectare per year.
What are the problems facing agriculture today?
A number of structural problems for which there is no simple solution; we need an integrated solution, but highly fragmented steps are being taken. The government has become bigger and there are diverse departments and ministries and proper coordination is no longer possible. What was possible in the 1960s — call it the green revolution, symphony, whatever… is not possible. In the earlier days it was possible to carry out ideas and bring together people much faster; otherwise we could not have increased wheat production thus.
With all the technology at our disposal, should it not be faster?
It should be but now our political system is also different; in those days there was a single leader and a more cohesive government. Today it has become more difficult with coalition government. Our agriculture is in a state of deep crisis which is due to a pattern of population pressure on farmers and farming. And we have not given thought in a planned and serious manner to develop non-farm enterprises as the Chinese did through their township-village enterprises. They had a conscious plan; that is why they were able to take so much manufacturing — whether Levi jeans or Samsonite TVs.
Is it too late for us to do something similar?
We don’t have the infrastructure in our villages; even in towns electricity is a problem. We’ve not had an energy security system in the villages combining renewable and non-renewable energy sources, and energy is a key input for small-scale manufacturing. Then we need training and capacity building. We are in a serious situation and on the 60th anniversary of our Independence we’re all saying agriculture cannot wait. Nehru had seen the Bengal famine and lived through so many famines in India because in the British days every third or fourth year there was a famine. Even the agricultural department in India was set up on the basis of all Famine Commission recommendations. So when Gandhiji said that in independent India food for all should become a reality, Nehru said let everything else wait but not agriculture. Today that statement is even more truer as the structure of our farming has changed, the cost of production has gone up and the risk involved — both meteorological and marketing — has increased and we don’t know what is in store with climate change and global warming. The net return has gone down because the size of the holding is small. I’m more worried about the future; how are we going to feed our population.
Do you think people like us are paying too little for our food?
Take the economics of farming… the agricultural cost and prices commission recommends just 15 per cent more than the cost of production. In which commodity do you get only a 15 per cent margin? Even Harry Potter gives you a 200 per cent discount! So farming has been treated very badly, economics of farming have gone worse and, according to the National Sample Survey organisation, 40 per cent of farmers want to quit farming if they have an alternative.
This occasion will provide an opportunity for introspection and coordinated action. In 2000 we had a meeting here on ‘Mission 2007 — a hunger-free India’.
But we are far from hunger-free…
Forget hunger-free, we have so much of child and maternal malnutrition, low birth-weight babies… our record is bad on every human development index criterion. And in this report if we go one step higher — from 128 to 127 — we are very happy!
What is you strongest impression from the 1947 era?
The rapidity with which transformation could take place. If we could put all the ingredients — technology, services, policies — right, the farmers will do the rest. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a very discouraging atmosphere. Even when I joined the Indian Agriculture Research Institute, the then collector of Kumbakonam asked me: ‘Why have your come to agriculture? Write a competitive exam’; I did and was selected for the IPS. My family wanted me to join but I had what my wife calls ‘a single-track mind’ and I said agricultural science is my profession and I won’t deviate from it. And it’s been a rewarding journey. There has been a very encouraging response from farmers; also, you help the farmer and you help the country. If you don’t help him he has no other way.
Did you ever imagine you’d make such a contribution to Indian agriculture?
One was not looking for any contribution; you just did your work wanting to ensure that your country progressed. The farmer is not a limiting factor; public policy and nature are the limiting factors. But when you see things can be done and are not being done, you feel very sad. Because it is not a god-given problem, it’s a man-made problem. They put the blame on technology or extension fatigue but underlining all this is the policy fatigue responsible for all these fatigues!
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