Studies also indicate that even at conservative estimates, a third of our population are undernourished, and that we need to bring at least another 6 million hectares of land under cultivation if we are to meet the total cereal requirement for the country. In Orissa, the distress and food insecurity stretches across several districts. There are districts like Bolangir, Kalahandi, and Nuapada, where, even one year of rain fall shortage leads to distress migrations on a massive scale, while there are districts like Gajapati, Koraput, Rayagada where chronic hunger is a stark reality that has little escape.
The poverty line percentages are said to have declined from 56.4% in 1973-74 to 37.18 in 1993-94 in rural areas, and from 49% to 32.4% in urban areas at 1973-74 prices. However, if we look more closely and try to figure out poverty line estimates as people unable to access enough food to even make up for the daily calorie needs (estimated at 2400 for rural populations, and at 2100 for urban populations), then we find the percentage of people unable to meet their minimum daily calorie requirements is actually 75% for rural areas, and 54% for urban areas. In Orissa, with stark contrasts of overflowing godowns and hunger and distress migrations hitting everyone, we find that we still have some of the worst human development indicators in terms of infant mortality and extent of malnourishment
The Orissa State Policy
In 1996, Orissa, according to its policy document on agriculture, “adopted a bold and unique Agriculture Policy during the year……. for the first time in the country to increase investment in agriculture, bring in a shift from subsistence agriculture to commercial agriculture and accorded status of industry to agriculture.” The main focus of this policy has been outlined as follows:
The agricultural policy of the state has the following focus:
· Industry status to Agriculture
· Shift from subsistence farming to commercial operation
· For better land use, diversification of cropping programme from uneconomic paddy to remunerative non paddy crops is advocated.
· Increasing the seed replacement rate (SRR) to 30% in a period of 5 years (by 2005) by producing more foundation and certified seeds through seed village programme.
· Increased use of bio-fertilisers.
· Rapid farm mechanization.
· Self sufficiency in foodgrains, vegetables, fruits, flowers, egg, milk ,fish and meat production
· Expansion of irrigation to 50% of cultivated area by exploiting ground water potential through bore wells, shallow tube wells and direct lift from rivers.
· Amelioration of problematic soils
· Entrepreneurship in agriculture and export orientation
The thrust areas have been outlined as under
o Dry land agriculture on watershed basis
o Production of commercial crops – cotton, sugarcane, patato
o Argil. Intensification with water management in irrigation command
o Quality seed production through seed village approach
o Small farm mechanization & agro service center
o Creation of farmer's market ( Kissan mandi)
o Information Technology in Agriculture
o Infrastructure development (Agro-processing, Cold storage, Seed processing etc.)
True to this policy, the state has made giant strides in commercialisation of agricultural lands, and weaning agricultural lands away from subsistence cropping to cash cropping. A striking example is cotton. In just the last three years, the area under cotton has gone up from 8205 to 10194 in Rayagada, from 5675 to 24010 hectares in Kalahandi, and from 3306 to 16060 hectares in Bolangir. In other districts, agricultural land has been converted to commercial eucalyptus plantations, like the JK Corps Rayagada, Koraput and Nabrangpur, taken up for commercial mint and tea cultivation in Keonjhar, ginger has been introduced extensively in Koraput to give just a few examples. The state has also set up an "exclusive organization The Agricultural Promotion & Investment Corporation of Orissa Limited (APICOL)" with the objective of translating the above objectives into reality through undertaking various promotional roles such as providing counseling and escort services, entrepreneurship building, extending consultancy services, disseminating information amongst entrepreneurs and above all act as a single window channelizing agency for various incentives under Agriculture Policy.Capital Investment Subsidy to commercial agri-enterprises @ 20% of the capital cost subject to a limit of Rs.20.00 lakhs is one amongst other incentives under this policy".
Some Points to Consider
In all this, the state seems to have overlooked some of the essential components that should perhaps influence agricultural policy, things like food security, livelihoods, production, and sustainability. The fact of reaching near self-sufficiency in paddy production, has motivated the state to turn away from food crops and promote commercial agriculture. Within a short space of introduction of this policy, however, we find that distress and poverty have gone up manifold in the different districts over the last few years. In Bolangir and Kalahandi, where more than 25 thousand hectares have been brought under cotton cultivation, unemployment and loss of livelihoods is so rampant that people have left their homes in lakhs looking for work elsewhere. In other districts where commercial cropping has been introduced, food stress has gone up manifold. Studies and past experience indicates that commercial cropping does little for enhancing the livelihoods of the local communities. Very often, commercial cropping requires much larger investments, and a scale of operation that very few people in underdeveloped regions can afford. It also involves mechanisation on a large scale, depriving the small, marginal farmer and the land less labourer of supplementary employment as wage labourers. The subsidies that organisations like APICOL would give would benefit the better off, who could once again use it to deny the poorer sections what little benefits they had out of agricultural labour. Such processes have been initiated in almost all places within the state, in a small or big scale with introduction of high yielding varieties of seeds, subsidies for mechanisation, and have caused the alienation of the poorer sections, and minority groups like the tribals more and more. All this would result in decrease in self-employment, and increased casualisation. This is corroborated by macro-level studies which indicates an over-all decline in employment in agro-industries, accompanied by a considerable increase in capital investment. Clearly there has been a substitution of capital for labour.
Access & Control over Productive resources
A major change that is taking place in the rural areas is the increasing constraint on resources, and the alienation of local populations from their resource base, including land, forests, and water. In Orissa, the tribal communities by and large denied access to the productive low lands in the tribal regions, have been surviving on sloping uplands taking recourse to shifting cultivation. The state has not bothered to put into place a policy that would enable these tribal cultivators to have any security of cultivation, as there has been a rule preventing ownership over sloping land. The tribal communities thus have always been encroachers, unable to optimise on any investment, and always insecure of their access to these lands, as from time to time, Government programmes for plantations, and other programmes take over the slopes, without developing any viable alternatives for the tribal cultivators.
Special Acts meant for the tribal regions are either ignored, diluted, or circumvented in various ways. Thus, the clause preventing transfer of tribal land to non-tribal parties is almost completely overlooked, as land transfers continue to take place in the tribal regions in the interests of private corporations opening up the area for harmful, polluting industries; land acquisition for public purposes is taken up to hand over tribal land to private parties, and the Panchayats Extension to the Tribal Areas Act, which sanctions complete control over land, water and forest resources to local communities in the fifth schedule areas has been diluted, and the power taken away from the Gram Panchayat to be handed over to the second and third tiers. Thus the tribal communities have a more and more constrained survival resource base.
In addition, the investment ratios for tribal land is also very low, in terms of subsidies, incentives, and even development schemes. Major portions of the watershed development programmes taken up by the Government benefit the people with ownership of land, and since tribal people have very little land, they get the least benefits. Thus growth in tribal production rates, income levels and quality of life is slow, almost nil, of not negative.
Agricultural Labour
An important consideration when we talk of food security should necessarily be Agricultural labourers. This is one of the most vulnerable sections of the society, suffering from job insecurity, poverty, indebtedness, bondage, forced migration, rampant exploitation, malnourishment, illiteracy, denial of access to productive resources, as well as major government subsidies, discrimination, lack of social security and about the most feeble political voice. Surveys indicate that the dependence on agriculture has come down from 63.8% in 1993 to 60% in 1999. Still a huge percentage, and 79% of the total work force, of the country.
Although Agricultural labourers are covered under the Minimum Wages Act, the enforcement is not effective. On an average, northern and eastern states have fixed higher wages thansouthern and western states. However, mere announcement of higher wages is no guarantee of increased real incomes, or any kind of food security, as minimum wages are rarely enforced, even in the Government works, and the labourer has to deal in what is invariably a buyers' market. Orissa is amongst the five states where real minimum wages has either declined or stagnated in the last ten years. The over all increase in real daily minimum wages for the country is 1.56%. Despite the fairly high rate of growth of GDP, the rural employment rates actually declined. The average number of days worked by males dropped from 331 to 321, while the number of days worked by women went up from 241 to 246, indicating the trend towards feminisation of agriculture with lower rates being paid for women.
Rural wage labour have been badly affected by the increase in food grain prices. More than 60% of the income of the agricultural labourer is spent on food items. Thusincrease in food grain prices directly affects the wellbeing of the wage workers. The recent increase in PDS prices, and the targeted PDS has been one of the cruellest jokes on the poor, which is already evidenced in the reports of widespread famine and drought conditions in different states of the country.
The Public Distribution System
Are we the hungriest country, perhaps the various World Development Reports could enlighten us, but surveys indicate that and more than half the women and children in the country are undernourished. Almost half the women in the age group of 15-49 and threefourths the children are anaemic, almost a fifth of all rural households face the prospects fo hunger, and 14% of all households do not get two square meals a day. High production food grains, and huge quantities of buffer stock in the godowns still does not enable access to food to the needy. The inability to buy still affects millions of our population. the oublic distribution system is supposed to insulate the the poor families from the impact of rising prices of essential commodities, and help them maintain minimum nutritional standards.
The steep hike in issue price of PDS commodities, the largest ever hike in fact, has made the PDS an instrument of pushing up prices of food commodities, rather than an instrument of hekping the poor. The decreasing off take from the PDS due to this steep hike, has more than anything else has resulted in the huge stcok pile in the FCI godowns and provides an illusion of self-sufficiency and abundance. Refusing to see this obvious situation, the Government has taken to exporting wheat and rice at prices far below the issue price for APL families. Infact, rice is being exported at BPL prices, which is half the economic costs of FCI rice. Given the poor identification of BPL and APL families in the country, and the not very secure grounds on which such distinctions have been made, this is a criminal betrayal. Drought, famine and starvation conditions are being reported from many parts of the country, the Supreme Court in a recent writ on a PIL filed by the PUCL has upheld the right to food as a fundamental right The Supreme Court observed that the Central and State governments had the primary responsibility to ensure the food grains over flowing in FCI godowns reached starving people and not wasted. The Court's anxiety was that the poor, destitute, and weaker sections of the society should not suffer from hunger and die of starvation. Mere schemes without implementation were of no use. Orissa is one of the states where compliance has been sought on this.
Alternatives
What are the alternatives that one can consider, and how would they be carried out, once they are translated into policythe best way would perhaps be to begin with some of the examples of success, and find out their replicability in other areas. Amidst the wide-spread reports of hunger and migration in the underdeveloped tribal regions of Orissa, one of the districts that rarely found mention was Kondhmals, formerly part of the undivided Phulbani. What do we see here. In Phulbani, the forest have been by and large preserved, and minor forest products including leaves, mahua flowers, mahua seeds, brooms, tamarind, to name only a few provide income for the tribals for a four to six months in a year. Land settlement in the past has ensured that each tribal cultivator gets ownership over atleast one acre of land. This perhaps more than anything else has helped preserve the forests, as settled cultivation has reduced the dependence on forests and shifting cultivation.
The other example is of an intervention for grain banks. In the yearly cycle of the tribals, the post-harvest periods are the times of much abundance, and there is a lot of expenditure on non-essential consumer items that undermine the economy of the tribal family. An input to encourage the tribal family to save part of the harvest produce at this time, taken up in more than 1000 villages across the tribal districts of Orissa has helped village communities develop a sustainable system of generating grain stocks which could be used by anybody within the community in the time of need. The decentralised structure of this system has effectively minimised overhead costs, and the ushered in a situation, whereby, the village community has taken responsibility for ensuring food security to each and every member within the village.
There is a growing feeling that without market intervention, there can be no agricultural development. But, the linkages with the market established are mostly to facilitate the farmer as a buyer. Few efforts have been made to facilitate the farmer to sell his produce, and the state is increasingly trying to withdraw from its role in ensuring MSP for even the essential agricultural products. It needs to be noted, however, that wherever direct market interventions have been taken up to facilitate selling of produce of farmers farm prices have stabilised, and production incentives have increased. Supporting women's groups for micro-enterprise in a constructive way also helps in improving the economy of the producers in the region as also enabling profits to be channelised back to the producer community.
Land to the tribal and other marginalised sections who are the real cultivators results in an immediate and visible improvement in quality of life. This has been the experience of Agragamee as well as other grass roots NGOs. it also improves the land value as the marginalised groups have much stake in optimising returns from their land. This is a challenge that the State must needs look into if long term food security is envisages for a country.
The alternatives that we need to look at then could be listed as follows
¨ Support to Production of cereals other than Paddy;
¨ Decentralisation of storage, and procurement of surplus: Subsidies in the form of godowns, local transport, and losses in storage, marketing, etc., and to maintain prices at the affordable rates;
¨ Support to women's groups in form of training and subsidies to facilitate decentralised PDS
¨ Entitlements and Resources to the land less and the marginal and small farmers;
What we sell is mud, what ever we buy is gold says Sumoni Jhodia of village Siriguda. Truth to say this statement sums up in a nut shell the economy of the tribal hinterlands, and I suspect of most other rural areas in this country. A few years back, when onion prices made us gasp for breath, we were talking with onion farmers in Kalahandi. Their crop of onions was just coming up, and we were interested to know how the conomics worked out for the producer. At how much would you sell your onions we asked. Oh it is difficult to get one rupee for a kg they answer. We take it to the nearest market, and we sell it in basket fulls, we would get about 50p., or a little more they answered. Soon after, we met the Collector and brought up the issue. The Collector seemed to be a progressive man. Yes, I know, he said. I am looking for some support to construct storage godowns for onions, but all my officers know is how to construct cold-storage units. You cannot store onions in cold storage, they just need a well ventilated place, he lamented………………..
There is a substantial difference between what the state has to offer, and what local people might actually need, and more than five decades after independence, food security is still an elusive chimera that dangles far away for the millions in this country, even as food stocks rot in over stocked godowns, and spill over to the outside to be covered by black plastic, resembling mounds of the dead!
|
