Serving Farmers and Saving Farming – First Report

The eight-member National Commission on Farmers, chaired by Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, was set up in 2004 by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to assess the extent of India’s agrarian crisis. It produced five reports (the fifth in two volumes). This first report was meant to assist central and state governments in arresting the decline of farm incomes and abating farmers’ distress. The report provides an overview of India’s agrarian economy and discusses the causes and effects of the agri-crisis, both environmental and policy-based. Its recommendations include setting up knowledge centres for farmers, framing a code of conduct for contract farming, ensuring better water management, providing food security, improving crop insurance and introducing insurance that covers accident, death and medical expenses. These steps, the report says, must be taken immediately to avert further damage. And that we must take Jawaharlal Nehru’s advice in this often-quoted remark from 1948: “Everything else can wait, but not agriculture.”