With a reduction in over 50 million farmers between the 1990 and 2000 census, you have to ask – where did these farmers and their families go?

The 2000 census shows that 55% of the population of India was farming, as opposed to 60% in 1990. While the population of India has gone up, even assuming no biases in fertility rates between rural and urban communities, 50 million people who were part of farming families have disappeared between 1990 and 2000.

Where have they gone?

For most part, these were small farmers who have not been able to sustain their livelihoods by farming and have had to migrate to cities. In effect, 50 million people who were able to sustain their lives through farming were forced to move into urban areas – specifically slums – in India.

Given our current governments’ focus on slums and its sustained efforts to demolish them, we need to ask whether they are devolving policies to prevent people from migrating to urban slums.

The answer – we quickly find – is no. In fact, most policies made vis-à-vis the agrarian sector are effecting farmers negatively, taking away from their ability to sustain their livelihoods through farming.

Fiscal policies in the agricultural sector represent this bias. While industrial sector loans are available at 9%, and loans to urban citizens are available at 4-6%, loans to the agricultural sector are at interest rates of 14-18%. In such a situation, small farmers who take loans – given the uncertainty or rains, and risks in the agricultural sector – find it difficult to pay back their loans and often find that the bank seizes their properties.

Another option is to take money from local money lenders, who today are usually retailers for seed, fertilizer, and pesticide in the area. Often the farmer has no option but to sign a contract where the money lender buys the produce crops at a fixed rate which is at least 25% below market price.

In either case, the small and medium farmers are serious in debt. The government has begun to recognize this thanks to a suicide rate in India of over 15000 farmers per year. It has reacted to this situation not by easing interest rates or helping livelihood processes but by increasing the loans available to the farmer by over 3 times. Dr. Sunilam, MLA from Multai, Madhya Pradesh, points out that this will only make the farmer three times more in debt.

The governments in the US and EU recognize the risks in farming and have provided major subsidies to their farmers. In total, the USA and EU give agricultural subsidies of over US$ 1 Billion every day. In 1999-2000, US spent $1.3 Billion on income support to rice farmers when its total rice production was worth US$ 1.2 Million. Even recognizing that 40-50% of these subsidies go to the richest 10% - basically the agro-corporations – the plight of the small farmer in the USA is better than India. While India can give subsidies up to 10% of total cost of food production – as per WTO agreements – its current rate is at a measly 3%.

While the developed nations continue to support their agro-corporations with product specific subsidies, the government of India has very limited product specific subsidies – usually in the form of support prices – and in fact has been cutting back on the support prices for cotton, sugarcane, etc. Non-product specific subsidies – such as in electricity, and water – have also seen a roll back with pressure from the World Bank under the ‘full recovery’ program. Agricultural subsidies, where given are not to farmers but to companies producing fertilizers and pesticides.

It is under these conditions that the Indian farmer is asked by its government to compete with agro-businesses. And while the Government of India fetes the winners of this competition, farmers continue to disappear – either committing suicide or moving to the cities to become destitute.

How can the Indian farmer compete with American multi-nationals under these conditions, especially with the government making policies that help these multi-nationals?

When 50 million people in your nation are forced to migrate in a 10 year period, and no government body has recognized this exodus, much less asked about the conditions of this exodus, it is time to question the focus of our governments and the direction of our policy. But who is there to question?

Much of this research was based on the 2000 Census of India as well as discussions with Dr. Sunilam, member of the coordination committee of National Farmers Coalition of India

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