No matter all the so-called solutions by way of higher prices to farm produce etc, Indian farming is going to keep suffering at our own hands. For, the problem does not lie in having or not having better prices; it lies in a terrible misjudgment about agri-culture.

Welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement about repeal of the three farm laws, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha said, its agitation was not just for that purpose, but also for a statutory guarantee to remunerative prices for all agricultural produce and for all farmers.

“This important demand of farmers is still pending,” the umbrella body of 40 farm unions said in a statement. It welcomed the decision, but added that it would wait for the announcement to take effect after due parliamentary procedures.

Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait added that the Government should talk to farmers over the issue of Minimum support Price (MSP) of crops and other matters.

THE issue, thus, still hangs fire. Despite the Central Government’s promise to withdraw the three farm laws, the protesters still feel that their grievances have remained unaddressed. This does give rise to a suspicion that something far bigger than just the so-called farmers’ demands may be involved in the protests that stretched for a year.

But far more important is the factual situation on the ground that the country’s agricultural sector has remained somehow stuck in the backwaters of collective consideration. No actual and credible solution has ever emerged from all the agitative exercise.

Agitations have come and agitations have gone -- right from the days of Mahatma Gandhi to today. Several leaders and organisations have emerged on the Indian scene asking for better justice to farmers -- mostly in terms of better price-framework for farm produce or even various inputs of agriculture including fertilisers and implements. The Government of the day has mostly accepted the farmers’ demands, hoping that the agitation has served its purpose and that the farmers

are satisfied.

A similar thing seems to have happened even now as Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has announced the Government’s decision to repeal the three new legislations, described pompously by the protesters as “black laws”. The protesters appear to be waiting still for further steps by the Government to have their demands fulfilled completely.

Unfortunately, none of the constituents of the situation around Indian agriculture appears to have given a fuller and in-depth thought to the issue. That is so because the larger Indian society does not seem to have spent its time and energy in understanding what exactly the issue is about agriculture in the Indian context.

To understand the issue correctly, we will have to travel to India’s villages -- typical locations tucked away in the country’s hinterland of geographical, political, cultural and social apathy -- all over the national landscape. Invariably, we will come across places stricken by obscene poverty, obnoxious societal apathy, political indifference. We may see lush farmlands in these places, and feel nice about the spectacle. Yet, a deeper look will reveal to us that most youths in the village are away in some urban habitation engaged in jobs that rarely pay for their living. Back home in the village we are in, we realise that only those who could not make it to cities have remained there, somehow making ends meet. A longer stay in the village may bring us to knowing the dark truth of farmers’ suicides as well -- owing mainly to poverty, indebtedness, and uneconomical farm holdings that rarely pay for the family’s living.

The atmosphere in such a typical village is generally desolate, with people moving about with unemotional faces, with young people standing at street corners smoking and drinking and playing cards. This picture of the young dividend Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi often talks of is actually shocking, to say the least. But then, that is what we are most likely to find in any typical village across the country.

The purpose here is to draw attention to the eternal problem of national apathy toward agriculture over countless decades. This apathy is the product of a thinking that agriculture is all about farming. This is far from the actual concept of what India traditionally understood as agriculture. That has led us to developing a narrow thinking about pricing of farm produce or of input and output.

The correct concept of agriculture denotes a wide range of aspects of rural living -- which also include village-industry and economy based on the professional work of artisans and craftsmen. Not just Mahatma Gandhi but also other thinkers visualised the typical Indian village as a complete unit of an interdependent system of agriculture -- a term that has both, agri and culture. Over the past hundred or so years, we have forgotten the beauty of this comprehensive concept. And by so doing, we have allowed our villages to lose their charm.

The ongoing plight of average Indian farmers stems from this problem. In our quest of imposing urban values and standards on the whole even on villages, we have allowed agriculture to be destroyed by our own acts of commission and omission. For no reason, we tend to regard villages as symbols of backwardness. So, invariably, our thought-process moves only to urban living and its norms and standards. Over time, we have created an overall Indian social eco-system in which we equate development to cities. Naturally, then, our brethren in villages tend to move toward cities -- in search of better life, leaving behind their roots in agriculture as a healthy and happy way of life.

When the villages suffer from such a reasoning, farmers are bound to suffer, too. No matter all the so-called solutions by way of higher prices to farm produce etc, Indian farming is going to keep suffering at our own hands. For, the problem does not lie in having or not having better prices; it lies in a terrible misjudgment about agri-culture.