Off-Farm Measures to Ease Rural Distress





It is welcome that the government has increased the number of days for which work under the employment guarantee programme, NREGA, is available this year, as part of its measures to provide relief in this year of acute rural distress, thanks to a second consecutive year of deficient rains. There are a few other things the government can do away from the farm that will offer relief to farmers.Accelerate the farm-to-fork retail supply chains that many organised retailers dream of building but give up on, in the face of legal obstacle to buying directly from the farmer under the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act, absence of power to run cold storages and transport networks. Offer subsidy for diesel-generated power this will disappear as grid power becomes available -for cold storages, incentivise states to exempt perishables from the APMC Act and let mail and express trains attach special coaches that carry refrig erated farm produce to cities. Remove the hank yarn obligation on cotton yarn producers. This would allow mills to offer farmersginners a better price for their cotton. Institute a factoring service for sugarcane growers: their dues from mills can be encashed, saving them from a dreaded descent into debt. Clamp down on illegal cigarettes smuggled into the country or produced locally by duty-evading fly-by-night operators from inferior tobacco, so that tobacco farmers are spared declining demand. Step up R&D to find uses for tobacco other than poisoning the human body , such as in pesticides and weedicides.
Just raising import duties on farm produce, as the government has been, is lazy policy . Set up a group in the Niti Aayog drawing people from different sectors, not just agriculture, to think about alleviating farm distress.
Source: Economic Times, 8-10-2015