Cost and debt rising, yield stagnant: Supreme Court panel on agri distress; suggests examining MPS, other measures

New Delhi: A Supreme Court-appointed panel on farmers' grievances and protests has filed its interim report, listing reasons for agrarian distress which among others include stagnant yield, rising costs and debts and inadequate marketing system.

The high-powered committee, constituted on September 2 under former Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Nawab Singh to resolve the grievances of farmers agitating at the Shambhu border, also suggested solutions including examining the possibility of giving legal sanctity to Minimum Support Price and offering direct income support.

While forming the committee, the SC had observed farmers' protest should not be politicised. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan on Friday took the interim report on record and praised the committee for its efforts and framing of the issues to be examined and defuse the agitation.

In its 11-page interim report, the panel said, "It is a well-known fact that the farming community in the country in general and that of Punjab and Haryana in particular has been facing an ever-increasing crisis over the last more than two decades." The stagnation in yield and production growth since the mid-1990s, after the initial higher gains of the the Green Revolution, marked the beginning of the crisis, said the report.

The panel said the debt on farmers and farm workers increased manifold in recent decades.

"In 2022-23, institutional debt of farmers in Punjab was Rs 73,673 crore, while in Haryana it was even higher at Rs 76,630 crore as per National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD, 2023). In addition, there is a significant burden of non-institutional debt on farmers, which is estimated to be 21.3 per cent of total outstanding debt on farmers in Punjab and 32 percent in Haryana, according to National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO, 2019)," the committee flagged.

The committee also comprised retired IPS officer B S Sandhu, Mohali resident Devinder Sharma, professor Ranjit Singh Ghuman and Punjab Agriculture University agricultural economist Dr Sukhpal Singh.

It said that declining net farm productivity, rising production costs, inadequate marketing system and shrinking farm employment have contributed to the deceleration in farm income growth.

Small and marginal farmers along with farm workers are the most affected and vulnerable segments of this economic squeeze, it said.

"As a matter of fact, rural society as a whole is under severe economic stress. At the national level, 46 percent of total workers are absorbed in agriculture whose share in income is only 15 percent," it said. "Not only this, there is a very high rate of disguised unemployment and a large number of unpaid family workers. A significant proportion among them is working-poor." The panel also said climate catastrophe and the resulting severity of the environmental changes, including depleting water table, frequent dry spells, excess rainfall pattern in some regions, heat waves etc. are impacting the farm sector and the food security in a big way.

Management of crop-residue too has become a serious challenge in agriculture, it said.

In its 11-page interim report, the panel said that additionally, the farming community across the country is struggling with a suicide epidemic.

"In India, more than 4 lakh farmers and farm workers have committed suicides since 1995 when the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) began collecting the data. In Punjab, a house-to-house survey conducted by three public sector universities recorded a total of 16,606 suicides among farmers and farm workers in 15 years, between 2000 and 2015. The study has revealed that most of the suicides were committed by small and marginal farmers and landless farm workers, high indebtedness being the major reason," it said.

The panel formulated 11 issues for the consideration of the apex court in pursuant to its September 2 order.

Among the major issues include measures to revitalise agriculture, examining the systemic and fundamental reasons for increasing indebtedness which is aggravating the agrarian crisis, farmers' distress and the causes behind growing unrest among the farmers and rural society.

"This will help in rebuilding trust between farmers and the government," it said, and added that the growing debt crisis needs special attention in order to provide relief to debt-stricken farmers and farm workers.

The panel said there is a need to examine "the profitability of farm sector through the mechanism of assuring remunerative prices that includes inter alia Minimum Support Price (MSP), direct income support and other viable approaches. The Committee will also examine the demand of farmers for providing legal sanctity to MSP." The court had formed the panel while hearing the Haryana government's plea challenging the high court's order asking it to remove the barricades erected at the Shambhu border near Ambala where protesting farmers have been camping since February 13.

The Haryana government had set up the barricades on the Ambala-New Delhi National Highway in February after the 'Samyukta Kisan Morcha' (Non-Political) and 'Kisan Mazdoor Morcha' announced that farmers would march to Delhi in support of their demands, including legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) for their produce.