MSP hike: Seeding the polls too late with sops

The Central government’s decision to fix the minimum support prices (MSP) of Kharif crops at 50% above the cost of production is a welcome move, but the timing reeks of political motivation on account of the fast-approaching General Election, which is slated to be held in April-May 2019. This move is a complete turnaround by the Modi government which had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court (SC) in February 2015 declaring that “it was not possible to increase the MSP for foodgrains and other farm produce on the basis of input cost plus 50% as it would distort the market.”

In view of the elections, the Modi government’s move is aimed at placating the farmers’ ire over the unremunerative prices of agriculture produce. But the move comes too late to undo the damage caused by the utter neglect and insensitivity of the government towards the farmers’ plight. The unremunerative farm prices and resultant mounting indebtedness of the farmers forced the financially and emotionally distressed farmers to commit suicide. Since the time Modi government took office in 2014, about 50,000 farmers have committed suicide till the end of 2017 as per report filed by the government in the SC in May 2017.

Now that the government has woken up to the crisis and declared that it will fix the MSP prices above 50% of the production cost, it is imperative that the intent is backed up by rigorous implementation so that the actual farmers are benefitted instead of the middlemen (agents and merchants) that are hovering above the heads of the farmers like vultures to extract their pound of flesh. For, in the past, these middlemen are known to have deliberately hammered down the prices of agriculture produce in the commodity markets (both spot and futures) to force the farmers to sell at prices much lower than the MSP, which were then bought by these middlemen only to sell the produce to the government at the MSP! As a result, while these middlemen skimmed away the cream, the toiling farmers were left high and dry. This was nothing but a daylight robbery of the public exchequer by the unscrupulous middlemen. Therefore, scrupulous implementation, and not just pious declaration of the MSP, would be the key to farmers’ welfare and, of course, to winning the polls next year.