Madhya Pradesh (MP) is an Indian a state that depends on agriculture for 30% of its income and reported 10.9% annual growth in its agricultural sector for 8 years up to 2015, India’s fastest growth.
Now, farm protests are sweeping MP. At their core lies a deeper crisis; a fractured farm economy, where 46% of households are indebted. As many as 1,321 farmers committed suicide in MP in 2016, the highest since 2013. While farm suicides dropped by 10% elsewhere in the country, MP saw a 21% jump.
The story of MP’s farmers is the story of India’s farmers in an era of record harvests. India grew more food grain in 2017 than ever before, and the government’s agriculture budget rose 111% over four years to 2017-18. Yet prices crashed, unpaid agricultural loans grew 20% over the year to 2017, and 600 million Indians who depend on farming struggled to get by.
But India was swept by about a dozen major farm protests in 2018, with thousands of farmers travelling to Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai in the last week of November 2018 alone. On November 29, 2018, more than 100,000 farmers from many states and more than 200 farm organisations streamed in to Delhi. They demanding a special parliamentary session and the passage of two private members’ bills--also known as Kisan Mukti bills (farmer freedom bills). These propose that MSP be made a legal requirement, the government buy all harvested crops and a debt relief commission be established to hold off debt recovery for up to three years in distressed areas and re-schedule and waive certain loans.
Underlying these protests are data that reveal the decline in India’s agriculture economy: The number of farmers dipped by over 8.6 million over 10 years to 2011, according to the Census of 2011, and the number of farm labourers increased by more than 37 million. The number of small and marginal farmers -with farms smaller than 5 acres or the size of four football fields- rose by 27 million over 15 years to 2015-16 to reach 126 million, as per the latest agriculture census.
According to business-standard.com¸ more than a 100,000 farmers from across India are reaching the national capital New Delhi on Thursday for a two-day protest march demanding a special 21-day session of Parliament. The farmers are demanding measures to address agrarian distress and the passage of two private members bills pertaining to loan waiver and on assured procurement alongside minimum support price for agriculture produce. The march has been organised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-backed All India Kisan Sabha and has the support of many groups under an umbrella organisation, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee.