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Events & Issues
Punjab In Crisis?
WHITHERING GREEN REVOLUTION
By Radhakrishna Rao
New Delhi, July 03, 2009
Punjab, known the world-over for its sturdy farmers’ who
heralded the green revolution in the late 60s that marked
India’s dramatic deliverance from food imports, is in the
throes an all-round crisis: stagnating farm yields and growing
agricultural indebtedness. With the fruits of the green
revolution, considered the country’s best advertised success
story, growing sour at a drastic pace, Punjab is now looking
out for a multi-dimensional strategy aimed at sustaining its
hitherto high-level of development.
Though farming still continues to account for around one-third
of the State’s GDP, stagnating farm yields, abnormally high
input costs, declining net income, depleting ground water
levels and fast spreading environmental degradation are
unfolding a farm crisis in the State. This is being
highlighted by the growing incidence of suicides by indebted
farmers.
Indeed, the farm crisis has made prosperous Punjab the
most-indebted State in the country. The Radhakrishnan
Committee on Agricultural Indebtedness observes: “the average
outstanding debt per farm household has been found to be
highest in Punjab followed by Kerala, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh
and Tamil Nadu—all relatively developed and better banked
States”.
Almost every village in Punjab has witnessed a suicide in at
least one farming family. And each year before the onset of
the farming season, small farmers, who account for 85% of the
farming population in the State, borrow money from the village
money lenders at an exorbitant usurious rate of interest. In
many cases, unable to pay back the debt along with the
interest induces many of them to get on the path of suicide.
All these developments are not to suggest that achievements of
Punjab on the farm front are insignificant. Far from it. The
State still leads the world by producing about 10-tonne of
wheat and paddy per hectare per year. But then reckless use of
fertilizers and pesticides has gone to unleash an ecological
havoc of massive dimensions. This apart, excessive and
thoughtless withdrawal of ground water for sustaining the
cultivation of water guzzling paddy that now covers more than
six million acres in Punjab has resulted in the ground water
declining, in many areas by at least one metre per year.
Obviously, Punjab follows the California model of agriculture
of using huge quantities of pesticides, fertilizers and
high-yielding seed varieties for producing crops. But while
the California farmers grow crops for six months and leave the
land fallow for replenishment for the rest of the year, the
situation is completely different in Punjab. There farmers
grow two to three crops a year without giving the soil a
chance to regain its health. This is why the productivity is
declining with each passing year.
Perhaps, one of the most disturbing developments associated
with the spread of the green revolution in the State is the
rapid spread of deadly cancer in many places, mainly due to
the proliferation of residues of pesticides used by farmers.
In 2005, when reports of growing incidence of cancer started
filtering from the cotton-rich pockets of the State, the
Chandigarh-based Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education
and Research (PGIMER) started a project to investigate its
causative factors.
A preliminary study found a much higher prevalence of cancer
in the Tailwind Sabo block of the State, where heavy
quantities of pesticide residues were found in the drinking
water. Against this backdrop, the report made a strong case
for a comprehensive study on environmental health with
particular reference to the cotton-growing regions of the
State known for their heavy consumption of agro chemicals,
setting up of a cancer registry and monitoring the supply of
potable water.
Incidentally, Punjab whose landmass accounts for just 2.5 per
cent of India’s geographical stretch consumes around 18 per
cent of the pesticides used in farms and fields. Moreover, a
majority of the farmers are unaware of the safe use of
pesticides and disposal of empty pesticide cans. As a result,
in the past four decades, heavy quantities of harmful
pesticide residues have managed to seep into the underground
aquifers of the State. A train connecting Bastinado in Punjab
with Bikaner in Rajasthan has come to be known as “Cancer
Express”. Number of the passengers travel to Bikaner for a
check up at its cancer hospital.
Worse, at his moment, the biggest crisis facing the farm
sector is the acute shortage of manpower. Many Punjabi farmers
are now finding it difficult to get workers on time to carry
on with their farming operations. All these years’
impoverished workers from parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
used to support farming operations in Punjab. But with a
better developmental scenario in their native States, the
workers have not only become expensive but also difficult to
come by. In addition, with the National Rural Employment
Generation Scheme providing gainful employment to a chunk of
the rural populace in both these States, few workers venture
out to slog in the paddy and wheat fields of Punjab.
Thus, the labour situation in the State has become so acute
that Punjabi farmers are willing to pay any price for hiring
labour. According to agricultural economists familiar with
Punjab’s farm scenario, the State’s dependence on migrant
workers is as high as 90 per cent. On a rough estimate, it
uses around 7,00,000 workers to support farming activities
spread across 28-lakh hectares. The Punjab Agricultural
Department is clear in its projection that the shortage of
migrant workers would increase with each passing year and
therefore, the State Government has decided to support the
farm sector through subsidy on machines that saw paddy through
drills.
Against this backdrop, efforts are on to help farmers in
Punjab diversify their crop portfolio with floricultural and
horticultural crops, both of which enjoy a big and ready
export market. The immediate plan is to bring around 5-lakh
acres of farmland in the State under diversified, high-value
crops that require higher capital investment but fetch
lucrative returns to the growers.
Finally, Punjab has a higher per capita income but a dismal
social development index. It has the country’s most adverse
child sex ration, high rate of female foeticide, farmers’
suicide, substance abuse and large percentage of educated
unemployed youth. The State needs a paradigm shift. Indeed,
the economy needs to be diversified to create productive
avenues for employment for a population so very dependent on
agriculture.—INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
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