What Do Farmers Want And What Does Government Want To Give? Insights From The Union Budget 2024-25

Aditi Sawant

Budget is a financial statement of the government which reflects its priority of sectors in the process of economic development.

Although India is in the top 5 countries in terms of GDP, unlike other developed countries, more than 17 percent of contribution to GDP comes only from the Agriculture sector in India which itself reflects the dominance of this sector in terms of consumption as well as employment. However, there is a complete mismatch between the GDP contribution of agriculture and allied activities and its share in the budget allocation. Unfortunately, agriculture and rural development sector comes as a last priority as per the government and bureaucratic understanding. Agriculture gets hardly 3 percent of the budget allocation despite its very strong backward and forward linkage to the crucial industries in the economy.

Hence, what do farmers want and what does government want to give? This question needs deep introspection into our agriculture policies.

In today’s presentation I will confine myself to three major areas. Firstly, women participation and empowerment in the agriculture sector. Secondly, social inclusion and technology penetration in agriculture and thirdly, the budget allocation for Research and Development which is a part of Green Box subsidy as per the WTO Terminology.

To address my first concern of gender balance and women empowerment I would like to throw light upon certain facts which were revealed during my primary data collection in Maharashtra and other adjacent states. It is found that hardly 5 percent of the women in the village participate in the major or minor economic or financial decisions of the household. As per the recent report published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ welfare, the number of women cultivators and workers are significantly less than their male counterparts. This clearly throws light on poor land ownership of women in agriculture and rural regions.

Government of India is working on transferring the immovable property rights in the name of the woman of the house. Schemes such as Prime Minister Awas Yojna promotes and priorities women ownership in immovable property. But in many states of India, land or immovable property ownership of women is a very big question mark. Also, another issue of concern that correct number of women agriculture workers are not reflected in the official government records.

Schemes like Lakhpati Didi for women self-help groups need actual assessment in terms of pre and post analysis of the scheme. Many of the women self-groups are engaged in non-agricultural activities such as sewing or stitching, pickle, papad, masala making or candle or rug making activities which are highly sub-standard in nature and do not help these women in the long run to grow professionally.

The announcement of Drone Didi Scheme is very important announcement for women farmers, and it seems to be beneficial to the women farmers if implemented properly.

My second concern is social inclusion and technology penetration in rural India. For social inclusion, especially post lockdown period, use of digital devices such as mobile phones, and apps have become important part of inclusive agriculture. However, as per my recent primary data survey, it is very clear that around 50 to 70 percent of the farmers have smart phones, but they hardly use these smart phone or internet services for agriculture related information. The apps they use give information primarily on weather forecast with very poor accuracy.

On the contrary, farmers need information on the current retail local market prices which is not available. They also want financial assistant for attending training programs on marketing, e-marketing, packaging and export. However, such skill development programs at village levels are yet not available and there is lot of ambiguity in the funds sanctioned.

We have recently published a book on Revolutionising Farming: Nexus between Education and Technology. One of our authors mentioned that the there is so much of pressure on the Government Agriculture Extension services departments. There is not enough manpower available, no adequate infrastructure available then how do you expect even these agriculture extension officers to reach out to the villages to impart such training programs.

And my third and the last concern is Domestic Subsidy given by the government in the form of green box subsidy and amber box subsidy which is a part of the budget allocation.

It’s very clear that Indian government spends more on food security allocation as a part of green box subsidy while there are not many funds allocated for real market data collection and research analysis, economic and social infrastructure building of the agriculture sector.

In this budget, Government of India allocated funds for 109 high yielding and climate resilient variety of crops, some custom duty relief on shrimp and other fish varieties from 10 percent to 5 percent or even up to zero percent, establishment of 10,000 need-based bio-input resource centres as Digital Public Infrastructure, Digital crop surveys to be undertaken in 400 districts and 1 crore farmers to be initiated into natural farming etc. However, announcement of such sporadic schemes are not going to give any concrete permanent solution to the downgrading the agriculture sector.

On the contrary, government of India should have invested in the concept of Farmers School up to 12^th grade primarily imparting professional and vocation training of smart agriculture. Although it is mentioned in the New Education Policy that ggriculture will be added as a vocational course from the 9^th standard onwards (the course work is designed by NCERT, New Delhi), however, there is not much implementation of this policy.

Hence to conclude I find this budget more as a bandage budget rather than a fundamentally troubleshooter budget for agriculture sector.

In my concluding remarks I have mentioned that Government of India must invest in Farmers School concept which imparts professional and vocational training to rural students up to 12th standard.

Government must invest in market extension services such as packaging, branding and marketing and export. There is very poor budgetary allocation for these crucial aspects of agriculture. Just because there is not much support available on packaging, branding and marketing our farmers have become helpless and committing suicide every year.

Information Technology is another crucial area, day to day update of local markets, connection to the direct customers, experts’ advice on domestic and international trading these services are required. Special benefits on cooperative farming or commercial farming are required.

For agricultural sector development, it should be treated like a business and not just as a supplier of food grains at subsidies prices.

Dr Aditi Sawant is Associate Professor & Head, Department of Economics at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.