GAJENDRA SINGH BECOMES FODDER FOR POLITICAL VULTURES

NEW DELHI: Politicians, like vultures, swooped in on the dead body of Rajasthan farmer Gajendra Singh to score brownie points, point fingers, make accusations, and render apologies with the Delhi police becoming an instrument in the ongoing confrontation between the Bharatiya Janata party led central government and the Aam Aadmi party led Delhi government.

Righteous speeches were made in Parliament, and a day later Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tried to cut a pious figure by apologising for continuing the rally after Singh’s lifeless body had been taken to hospital, and continuing to rant against the police for its “failure” to stop the suicide. The Delhi police joined in with vigour, registering cases, and giving its own apathy a clean chit.

Gajendra Singh played out his suicide in almost slow motion that was captured in slow motion. The post mortem report has confirmed that he died of hanging.

The BJP and its government took the position that “the issue was above politics” with Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging members in the Lok Sabha to make common cause with the government in an all out effort to mitigate the farmers misery. Over the two days now, there has not been a word from the government or the political parties of what is being done to urgently address the issue of agrarian distress that has deepened with the destruction of the kharif crop because of freak weather conditions.

PM Modi invited ‘recommendations’ clearly giving a go-by to any number of studies, reports and proposals that have poured in from agriculture bodies, political parties and experts over the last years. The facts and figures are dismal, with the 2011 census registering 15 million fewer farmers than in 1991. Since 1995, an estimated 300,000 plus distressed farmers have committed suicide. The worst hit states are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Gajendra Singh was from Rajasthan.

The meteorological department has predicted a less than normal monsoon that will have further impact on the farmers plight. However, as expert and journalist P.Sainath has repeatedly pointed out monsoons are “ by no means the main reason for the farm suicides. And with the bulk of those suicides occurring amongst cash crop farmers, the issues of debt, hyper-commercialisation, exploding input costs, water-use patterns, and severe price shocks and price volatility, come much more to the fore. All factors majorly driven by state policies.”

Sainath and others have blamed the corporatisation of the agriculture sector, driven by new credit policies, as a major reason for the current agrarian distress with pressure now mounting on the visibly reluctant government to waive the loans to farmers, and introduce effective subsidies.

Successive governments at the centre--Congress and now the BJP---have remained anti-farmer with the race for corporate approval determining measures that have worked against the tillers of the land. In opposition both these political parties make pro-farmer noises, but when in government the interests of the farmers are compromised under pressure from big business. For instance the Land Acquisition Bill passed by the Congress led UPA government exempted government from the ‘consensus’ clause that was made applicable and that too partially,only to the private sector for acquiring the farmers land. The BJP led government has gone several steps further by virtually getting rid of the consensus and the social impact clauses altogether.

According to well known economist Utsa Patnaik, “forty years of successful effort in India to raise foodgrains absorption through Green Revolution and planned expansionary policies, has been wiped out in a single decade of deflationary economic reforms and India is back to the food grains availability level of fifty years ago”. There has been a drastic reduction of state spending over the past decade and more on rural development that has had an adverse fall out on the purchasing power of the farmers.

Governments increasingly wedded to big business and investment have been moving away from the agrarian sector at different levels. Fudging of figures has been a major issue that has been pointed out and criticised by agrarian experts over and over again. For instance even now in the Lok Sabha,the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mohanbhai Kundaria, put down the extent of crop damage to 93.81 lakh hectares this season when on March 16 the governments own figures had spoken of crop damage to 181 hectares. The Opposition pointed to the difference, demanding an explanation that of course remains in the twilight zone that all governments value and protect.