M S Swaminathan report that has kept farmers vs govt battle alive for 12 years?

More than 50 years after MS Swaminathan-led green revolution, farmers still complain of systemic neglect by the various governments at the Centre and in states.

Census 2011 data show farmers are giving up agriculture for other vocations. Some of the analysts have claimed that the farm dropout rate is 2,040 every 24 hours. This means that every passing day, more than 2,000 farmers are moving away from farms.

Angry farmers are politically damaging for ruling dispensations. Governments such as those led by Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to pay heavy price of farm distress.

The Vajpayee government's 2004 loss served a warning to the next regime led by Manmohan Singh, who constituted a commission headed by agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan in November 2004.

The Swaminathan Commission was tasked with finding solutions to the problems faced by farmers. The commission submitted five reports between December 2004 and October 2006.

The farmers, organised under various umbrella groups, today demand implementation of recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission.

CAUSES FOR FARM DISTRESS

The Swaminathan Commission identified certain causes for farm distress. These are:

• Unfinished agenda in land reform
• Quantity and quality of water
• Technology fatigue
• Access, adequacy and timeliness of institutional credit
• Opportunities for assured and remunerative marketing
• Adverse meteorological factors aggravate these problems

The commission concluded that farmers needed to have assured access and control over basic resources including land, water, bio-resources, credit and insurance, technology and knowledge management, and markets.

SWAMINATHAN COMMISSION SUGGESTIONS

• To distribute ceiling-surplus and waste land among farmers: The share of the bottom half of the rural households in the total land ownership was only 3 per cent and the top 10 per cent was as high as 54 per cent. One of the demands of the agitating farmers today is that they should be made the owner of the land they have been tilling for years.
• To prevent diversion of prime agricultural land and forest to corporate sector for non-agricultural purposes.
• To ensure grazing rights and seasonal access to forests to tribals and pastoralists, and access to common property resources.
• To establish a National Land Use Advisory Service: This would have the capacity to link land use decisions with ecological meteorological and marketing factors on a location and season-specific basis.
• To set up a mechanism to regulate the sale of agricultural land, based on quantum of land, nature of proposed use and category of buyer
• To give farmers a minimum support price at 50 per cent profit above the cost of production classified as C2 by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP)

WHAT IS C2?

The CACP defines production costs of crops under three categories -- A2, A2+FL (standing for family labour) and C2.

A2 is the actual paid-out expenses incurred by farmers -- in cash and kind -- on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, hired labour, fuel, irrigation and other inputs from outside.

A2+FL includes A2 cost plus an imputed value of unpaid family labour.

C2 is the most comprehensive definition of production cost of crops as it also accounts for the rentals or interest loans, owned land and fixed capital assets over and above A2+FL.

Swaminathan Commission recommended this to be the basic cost and prescribed MSP 50 per cent above C2.