With farmers in several parts of the country agitating against falling prices, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday once again sought to assure them that the government was committed to double their incomes by 2022.
In an event that was billed as a rare instance of the Prime Minister interacting directly with farmers, Modi, without dwelling on the contentious issue of falling price of farm produce, sought to highlight his government’s achievements, including the promise to guarantee an MSP which will be 1.5 times the cost of production.
That cost, Modi said, would include cost for hired labourers, irrigation cost, fertilizer and seed cost, cost incurred on hiring machinery, land revenue given to state governments, interest on working capital and rent on leased land.
Though he didn’t spell out explicitly, experts said that these were the ingredients of cost calculation based on A2+FL method, and not C2.
Modi said the Centre was working on four main ways to double incomes: lowering the cost of production, enabling farmers get right price for their produce, stopping wastage of food and finding alternative source of incomes for farmers away from conventional farming.
“When we said we want to double farmers’ incomes, people mocked that, saying it is not possible, and tried to demoralize us. But we believed that Indian farmers are willing to take risk…,” Modi said.
He said India achieved record production of foodgrains, cereals and pulses in the last four years and that it was due to the effort of farmers.
“In the last four years of UPA government, foodgrain production touched 250 million tonnes, but in 2017-18 we have achieved a production of 280 million tonnes, which is a new record,” the Prime Minister said.
He said average production of pulses had risen by 10.5 per cent, horticulture crops production by 15 per cent, fish production by 26 per cent and milk production by 24 per cent during the four years of NDA rule.
He went on to list the achievements of his government, including irrigation schemes and the plan to link village haats with main mandis, among others.
In their interaction facilitated through Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Common Service Centers (CSCs), farmers listed their achievements and how they have benefitted from government schemes.
None of the participants said anything on the difficulties that they were facing in the agriculture sector, including the falling price of produce.
Farmers from the three largely agrarian BJP-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where elections are due later this year, were also included in the interaction.
The three states, where Opposition Congress had made farm distress as a major election issue, have seen farmer agitations in the last few years due to falling prices of farm produce.