Mumbai: Chairman of Maharashtra task force on farm distress, Kishore Tiwari, has urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to come up with direct incentives for farmers in the budget rather than painting a rosy picture that everything is going to be well.

The veteran farm activist says that the era of globalisation and free market economy has only fuelled farm distress especially in areas where dry-land farmers, as in the state’s Vidarbha region, have “found it difficult to compete with global market prices.”

Tiwari is battling for an introduction of direct subsidies — in the form of government paying farm workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and imposing restriction on imports.

“Dry land produce as in Vidarbha includes cotton, pulses and soya beans. The major suppliers of cotton across the globe are the United States, European countries and other rich countries where they get substantial incentives including transportation. The government here should come up with such incentives so that Indian farmers can compete with global players,” he says. Presently, prices are at a four-year low in India, he adds.

With an agriculture growth of a low 2.1 per cent for this year, the Economic Survey 2018 has also stated that “the change in agriculture productivity patterns as a result of climate change could reduce annual agriculture incomes by between 15 per cent and 18 per cent, and between 20 per cent and 25 per cent particularly for unirrigated areas.”

At least 52 per cent of India’s total land under agriculture is still unirrigated and depends on rain and therefore this sector would need state attention. “The major causes of agrarian crisis is due to unfinished agenda in land reforms, quantity and quality of water, technology fatigue, access, adequacy and timeliness of institutional credit and opportunities for assured and remunerative marketing.”

Tiwari added that though Maharashtra has started working on core issues like bio-resources, credit, technology and knowledge management, “the ground reality is that government programmes do not reach small and needy farmers.”

Though mega farm loan waivers have been given by the state, it was a temporary necessity to revive farming “but there is no legitimate binding on nationalised banks to create a secure credit system in the long term. The waiver of loans implies that banks will have to be compensated by the government for the amount involved. This means that large sums of money, which would otherwise have gone to strengthen agriculture infrastructure and research will not be available.”

Middlemen and economic exploitation of farmers is the reason for not getting the best price for the produce and that is why it is essential for the government to promote a farmers’ market where farmers can directly sell their produce to the consumers, he said.

He also says that doubling farmers’ income by 2022 is impossible unless there is a greater focus on this sector.