A Hope and a New Dawn
G Mamatha
‘THE Future is Plump with Promise’, said Maya Angelou. Every morning inspires us to see through the window waiting for that dawn, that future to materialise. So passed the year 2022. Hope never dies!
The first of January was another foggy day in Delhi. But it is from Delhi that our hopes have to be realised. So again with vain hope we waited for the sun to shine on our hopes and their promises. It might be the fog or the smog, neither was the sun visible, nor the hope.
LOOKING AT THE EARTH
Look at the earth. Learn patience. What promise does the land hold for me?
Our incomes from the farms were supposed to double by 2022. February 2022 made it six years of waiting. With each passing year, the excitement grew, tension and impending relief. But slowly after years passed, doubts started creeping. Will they or won’t they? The famous Shakespearean dilemma. But hope never dies. It might be the first person to have drunk the nectar. It lives forever. Slowly, yet surely we are going to welcome another February. This 28th of February, it would be seven years since the promise was made to double the incomes of farmers. Just like the January skies in Delhi, will this promise be covered by fog or is this promise just smoke, that just drifts away!
If you do not keep the promise, sell the word that what was achieved was indeed, what was promised or you did not allow us to keep the promise. This is brazen. Less brazen is, sell it saying that we are already almost there and would reach there certainly by 2024. Blame it on Covid or the Kisan’s struggle! We did everything in our hands…but for the pandemic, everything would have gone according to the script.
Let’s read the script now. To show the resolve of the government (and its seriousness), a committee was appointed to draw a road map. It drew it in 14 volumes! Efforts started accordingly (don’t be cynical, let us give the benefit of doubt to the batter (can’t use the word batsman) that is the government). Lo and behold! The results were surprising. According to one study, ‘between 2016-17 and 2020-21, the last year for which data is available, farm incomes declined 1.5 per cent per annum, three times faster than it did during the agrarian crisis under NDA-I’. According to the Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of the National Statistical Office (NSO), ‘the income of farmer households from crop cultivation declined 1.5 per cent per annum between 2012-13 and 2018-19’. Now these are two different studies, giving a similar assessment of the situation!
We find the earth beneath is shifting. So what went wrong with the script? Listen to Ramesh Chand, a member of the government’s think tank NITI Aayog, who in 2021 stated that the target would not be met because of the ‘repealing of three farm laws’, which were to promote corporatisation of agriculture. That’s it. If these laws would have been allowed to stay, farming incomes would have doubled. That’s for sure. But now don’t ask for whom? The answer is obvious. It is for the corporates, who invest in agriculture, dispossess us from our land and change the culture of cultivation. Those corporates would have earned super profits (as if they are not already earning, no, siphoning them) and doubled their income. The promise was clear...farming income would be doubled by 2022. Our understanding is at fault. We always thought about ourselves. How selfish! If we had realised that it was for the corporates, we would not have harboured false hopes. Not only did we harbour false hopes, but are blaming the lack of intent. Don’t forget that we had punctured the attempts to implement the promise when we launched and lauded that heroic farmer’s struggle demanding the repeal of farm laws. Dare we question now?
Now let us see the less brazen defence. Union minister of agriculture and farmers welfare Narendra Singh Tomar, during the 2022 budget session in parliament, listed 17 schemes initiated by the Centre and said that in the absence of income data, monitoring the performance of these schemes was enough to prove that the goal of doubling farmers’ income was within easy reach. This in spite of the fact that in the last three of the five years, the union agriculture ministry has spent less than what it had budgeted for centrally sponsored agriculture schemes. In 2019-20, the actual expenditure on such schemes was 29 per cent lower than the allocated amount. In 2020-21, the deficit was 18 per cent. The actual expenditure for 2017-18 was also 4 per cent lower than the budget. In 2022-23, the allocated budget for centrally sponsored schemes is Rs 105,710 crore, which is among the lowest since 2019-20.
The Press Information Bureau (PIB) came out with a statement in defence of the government on December 13, 2022. It states that the government has ‘adopted and implemented several policies, reforms, developmental programmes and schemes for achieving higher incomes for the farmers directly or indirectly’ and gives glimpses from 19 such policies/scheme/programmes. All this to substantiate his excellency the minister’s claim that ‘we are on the right track’.
To paraphrase a dialogue from a recent hit movie, ‘numbers, numbers, numbers. I hate them. But what can I do? They do not leave me’. Unfortunately despite all attempts to fudge, hide, stop, certain numbers and data refuse to lie low. They bounce out into the open. Here is another one from such a lot. The monthly income of an agricultural household has increased from Rs 6,426 in 2012-13 to Rs 10,218 in 2018-19. These numbers are quoted even by the PIB statement. But fed on the tales of Mahabharata, remember that to kill Drona, an elephant was sacrificed, so that Yudishtar can utter a half-truth and disarm Drona. Now it is our turn to be disarmed. All is fair in war and love!
The hidden half-truth from the above numbers is that the share of income from cultivation has reduced. In 2012-13, households earned 48 per cent of their income from crop production. The share dropped to 37 per cent in 2018-19. As a result of the unviability of agriculture, losing hope, the numbers of those engaged in farming fell down from 57.8 per cent in 2012-13 to 54 per cent in 2018-19. Lost hope! What a great sin! With 2024 approaching once again, we will be fed with lots of hope and promises. Of course promises do not feed our empty stomachs!
LOOKING AROUND US
Look around yourself. We are living in our own house with 24x7 electricity. There are no homeless. There is no hunger. There is no want or deprivation. Azaadi ka Amrit Kaal! That we did not own a house was true till 31st December 2022. But as it was promised, by the turn of mid-night, we suddenly found ourselves sheltered. A promise was made and kept! Don’t dare to question! We cannot doubt that this promise was not kept, because unlike the other promise discussed above, there was no clear indication that it was not kept. Unless the people who made the promise themselves accept that it was not kept, we could not even claim that it was not kept. These are not the times for such claims, is it not? Look around and live in the world where you think you own a shelter. Aren’t we told: ‘I think, so I am’!
LOOKING AHEAD
Looking ahead, we are promised that by 2025, we will, for sure become a five trillion dollar economy. Yeah, it was also postponed by three years. Don’t ask who will benefit. Given all our experiences, the answer is obvious. Don’t hope that we will be in the list of beneficiaries. The race at the top is hotting up between the two A’s. It is not crowded but there is no space out there. Many famous surnames are fighting it out. We are only supposed to salivate at the prospect of reaching the summit, the view from there, the life there. That is the reason idle hope exists for us!
But pandemic had shown us all that sitting idle bores us. We cannot be confined. Not to our dreams or locked in our houses. Pandemic showed us that we can work from home. But it is outside for which we are made. We are social. We yearn for freedom. We hope for a better life. We have a future. We hope. We hope to realise. Realisation is what makes us who we are.
2023 is here and whether we wait, want, or not, 2024 too will soon be all over us. These are the times for us to show that we do not only live on hope, but we hope to realise them and work to realise them. We are humans. We are, so we think. This is the reality.
PS: The promise to send humans to space by 2022 too was postponed now to 2024! Keep looking up!
