“India won freedom 60 years ago, but the Indian kisan has now become a slave in his own country. Every other producer of a commodity determines its selling price. The only unfortunate exception is the farmer; the price of his produce is decided not by him but by the buyer.”
Nagi Reddy, a sugarcane grower from Mumbojipalli in Medak district in Andhra Pradesh, quoted by Sudheendra Kulkarni in his Indian Express column today.
Writes Kulkarni:
“Catastrophic developments are taking place in Indian agriculture, about which our ruling economic and political elite neither knows nor cares.
# With the water-table going down, farmers are forced to dig their bore wells deeper, incurring higher costs
# Power supply is woefully inadequate and erratic
# Spurious seeds are flooding the market and selling at astronomical prices
# Bank credit is untimely, insufficient and troublesome, compelling kisans to turn to private money-lenders
“Is there any surprise that more and more sugarcane farmers in Telangana are committing suicide?” asks D. Vasanth Kumar.
Read the full column here: In incredible India, spare a thought for the farmer
A “commodity” by definition is something the price of which is set by the market – usually its marginal cost i.e. the cost of producing the next unit. No farmer can have the luxury of pricing according to his desire unless he is growing something that no one else is.