A solution can simultaneously address three dire needs: shifting farmland in Punjab away from paddy, to crops that consume less water; improving protein consumption by India’s malnourished population; and providing stable, remunerative prices to millions of paddy farmers in other states. What stands in the way of this solution is the rulers’ own determination to restructure India’s agriculture and food system in favour of imperialism.
The Ukraine war has provided India’s rulers with a ready alibi for all the adverse developments in the economy. But the principal responsibility for the suffering of the people thus cannot be shoved onto world events; it lies principally with India’s rulers themselves, who have led the country into the present abyss.
While the Modi government’s step to ban the export of wheat was widely criticised, the criticism has been largely from a neoliberal standpoint, not from the standpoint of people’s interests. What needs highlighting, however, is that the debacle was the result of Government policy.
All the official reports agree: Agriculture has done well in the past two years of the pandemic. One would have expected that this growth in production would translate into better income for peasants and rural labourers. Instead there is a marked deterioration.
The economy was in a depression even before March 2020. With the massive depression of demand that has taken place due to the Covid-19 lockdowns and the Government’s refusal to spend, many rural households that were earlier struggling to keep from falling would have been pushed over the edge.
Some commentators have concluded that the bulk of farm households are not really “serious” farmers, since they derive more of their income from wages than from farming crops. An editorial in the Indian Express bluntly concludes: “The government should stop obsessing over ‘marginal farmers’…. Farming is best left to those who can do it well. Better fewer, but better.” But interpretations of this finding differ drastically depending on one’s overall class viewpoint and aims.
The media widely reported that the State Bank of India Research Department found that “Farmers’ income doubled in FY22 as compared to FY18….” However, an examination of the SBI ‘report’ reveals that there is no report as such, merely some baseless claims whose methodology is shrouded in mystery.
When economists criticise a particular economic policy measure, they generally do so on the implicit assumption that the rulers could have acted differently. But unless their criticism is minor, this assumption is questionable. While some ‘tweaking’ is always possible within a given policy-frame, are rulers really free to change their economic policies drastically, i.e., change the policy-frame? And if they are not, what is the point of criticism?
The Indian authorities are putting the finishing touches on a financial regime that will perpetuate an unprecedented level of control of India’s economic policy by foreign investors. The simple mechanism through which this regime is to be instituted is large-scale foreign investment in Indian government bonds.
India’s private corporate sector is more prominent today than at any time in the past. Its chieftains are listed among the richest persons in the world. The Indian government’s growth plans now explicitly centre on the country’s largest firms, with the aim of creating...