Agricultural Techniques in India and the condition of farmers, Comment.

Agriculture contributes to nearly one third of India GDP. It provides livelihood for the major Indian population. Some of the challenges agriculture faces are old, some are new. Government must give agriculture the same importance as industries. If the proper care won't be taken, the words like "small farmer" will become a history.

The problems of Indian farmers are even bigger than what government anticipates. No one thinks agriculture as a respectful profession anymore. Gone are the days when people used to prefer farming over government job. Now even farmers don't want their kids to become a farmer .Young people going away from farming. Many farmers are not in farming by choice but because it's the only way they can earn their bread. Many have no knowledge of recent agriculture developments .They still rely on the knowledge passed over their ancestors. So awareness about new developments is very much necessary. Government has started many programs to spread awareness including time to time "krishi mela" but active participation of farmers are also required for its success .

Farmers lack motivation. It becomes quite clear from the fact that sometimes they do have the knowledge but they don't want to try any new crop because they think what if this crop turns out bad .They want to be on safer side. They don't want to take risks .Small farmers can't even afford risks. In this scenario assurance from government comes as great help .There are schemes but the implementation is not proper. Recently union government has announced that farmers can claim insurance even if only 30% of crop is damaged, previously it was 50%. This is indeed a good step which will definitely help the farmers but it's more important to ensure that they get the insurance money in time. A small farmer invests all of his money in the hope that this season he would have enough grain to go through the year but when the crops goes bad ,he loses everything so it's necessary to ensure that he gets the money before the next crop.

Recently agriculture industry is facing a grave problem of labors. In small villages most of the labors have fled to city to earn a better livelihood. So a balanced involvement of machinery is need of hour.

The Unpredictable nature of monsoon has caused extensive damage to agriculture. A crop like rice requires water at least three times. In many states farmers mostly rely on diesel pumping sets for irrigation which is more costly. So irrigation along with fertilizers and labor costs takes a big chunk of agriculture expenditure. In many areas there are canals but they are poorly managed .Sometimes even when the rivers have sufficient water still there is no water in canals because somewhere in the way the canal is blocked and hence not operational anymore.

The average inflation in India in 2014-2015 was 6.37% but for the same time period minimum support price of wheat was increased by 3.07% only. Meaning that same amount of things which a farmer could buy for rupees 100 in 2013, he/she would have to pay rupees 106.37 now but the farmer has only 103.07 rupees. Still government is looking for ways to decrease the amount procured under this scheme, in an attempt to decrease subsidies. GOI must ensure that in no way interest of farmers will be harmed.

Nishant Gaurav

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