Serving Farmers and Saving Farming: From Crisis to Confidence – Second 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 second report focuses on the public spending and administrative initiatives that were required to mitigate India’s agrarian crisis. These included reforming the supply of credit, setting up state-level farmers’ commissions, and compiling a census of farm suicides. These measures had to be implemented immediately, the Commission said, and would continue till the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12). The Commission stressed the urgency of the agrarian situation. It said that 400 million children, women and men from families of small or marginal farmers and landless labourers were in deep distress. It asked the government to implement the solutions proposed in its first report without delay.