Year after year while distributing farm machineries like tractors our Chief Minister and other officials have been lamenting about the poor farm output despite 70% of our population being farmers. This year also during the 3rd Northeast Agri Expo, the CM distributed tractors to 53 Naga beneficiary farmers under the CM Corpus Fund 2012-13. While the CM may be right in giving his assessment about misuse of such benefits or land fragmentation as plausible reasons for the low productivity, nevertheless the fact that in the last six years the State government under his leadership has given a total of 224 tractors and 262 power tillers to the farmers and the continuing concern over the low food productivity is something that policy makers should have taken note of. Also if such distribution of farm machineries is benefiting only the rich so called farmers who may also be not using it for large scale purpose, why is the government turning a blind eye to the failure of this programme. Perhaps, after all the answer to this could be found in the supply side arithmetic. It is obvious that the State government is losing money in running such a programme but the powerful people are making their share of profit through supply of these tractors. And so it is actually not surprising to see how such programmes are being implemented without any rational thought as long as some people are benefiting themselves in the process through self-enrichment. Many of our government programmes are supply driven and they are being monopolized and controlled by a few people. This is part of the sad story of our development.
Coming back to the issue of mechanization of farming for higher production on the field, the question however remains as to whether we are doing this the right way. This column has in the past raised these arguments and we will revisit some of them. Firstly the wisdom of subsidizing machineries only to the so called progressive farmer (who can afford it) is somewhat disconcerting. And who are these progressive farmers by the way? Such progressive farmers are contractors, politicians, public leaders i.e. those who are well off in society. Those who actually work in the fields and cultivate the land are poor farmers who cannot afford such machineries. It will therefore be a fallacy of the government to expect the progressive farmers to bring about our green revolution. They may be able to display their products during fairs, road shows or agriculture expo. But this is simply not enough to become a producing society as our CM has been reiterating. The government’s approach will have to be reworked. And as rightly noted, no amount of human workforce can achieve surplus production unless machineries are involved. The point for our policy makers is simply this—to empower and assist the 70-80% of population who are seriously engaged in farming. Perhaps the suggestion of the CM that farmers set up cooperative society for common use of such farm machineries as in Australia, Europe etc is worth trying. In this way the government can reach out to more farmers while also minimizing expenditure. The other point is that good policy and planning alone will not do. The flaws within the system and the attitude of the people will also require correction.
