Why governments fail to improve Indian farmers' lives?!

Even though after independence India in today,s date is still an agriculture based country with about 70% its rural population stil depends primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, with 82% of farmers being small and marginal. Govt is trying to provide and empower as much as it can for the upliftment of indian farmers yet crisis is still working on. Multiple factors such as Weak supply Power where farmers are barely empower as suppliers in market, they are ill equipped to manage risk and burdened with credit and debt. Over dependence on agriculture 60% of the Indian population depends on agriculture for livelihood while contribution to the national GDP through agriculture is only 14-15%. Clearly this is a recipe for unsustainable development.

Low investment in Research & Development: Less than 1% of the Agricultural GDP in India is spent on research. That is abysmal considering this sector is critical to food security of the country and provides livelihood to 60% of our population. Lack of enabling infrastructure along the value chain: There is a staggering lack of infrastructure across the entire agricultural value chain. To make matters worse, a perspective on how this can be fixed also does not exist.

Farmers’ protests have ruled the headlines consistently in the last two years and their distress over low farm prices, poor logistics for transport and government-assured purchases has been clearly evident. While the 14 volumes of the Dalwai Committee Report on doubling farmers’ income released last year provided a road map for transition from a mere Green Revolution to an Income Revolution for farmers, a parliamentary panel report submitted in the Lok Sabha on January 3 underlines that the country is yet to solve the 'Riddle of Agriculture Marketing'. Here are its 6 reasons:

1. 69 to 73% of the rice and wheat produced in 14 years was not procured by FCI/state agencies

2. Shortage of APMC markets in the country

3. Regulated markets far off from farmers

4. The poorstate of infrastructure in APMC markets

5. Poorly implemented regulations of the APMC Act

6. At least one gramin haat must be present in each Panchayat

It shows that prioritizing marketing management and connecting farmers with the consumers is one of the keys to overcoming agricultural stress faced by our farmers. Providing a critical insight into the issues to connect farmers with the consumers, it demands serious action from the state and the central government just a few months ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Need to improve the Agriculture technology: 4 Modern techniques:

Minimizing human efforts to get the highest yield is what defines modern agriculture. New farming implements in India became possible with brilliant use of technology and ergonomic innovative ideas put together.

With the passage of time, new upgradations in technology and understanding led to save both time and money in farming.

Here is the list of practices that made agriculture possible in unthinkable ways-

1. Improved Irrigation:

2. Innovative Breeding techniques

3. Rise of smart and custom made machines

4. The ‘IT’ Agriculture

Agricultural implements in India thus made its journey from quantitative production machines to qualitative inventions. This has made modern agriculture an indispensable factor of growth.

The growth graph of 2.1% annually in 2017-18 is an indication of this fact. Farmers in India are moving towards mechanization at a faster rate than it has ever been. The record production of 284.83 million tonnes in 2017-18 with US $ 15.67 billion worth of export speaks volumes of the growing impact of modern agriculture.