Dear All,
As you know, we run extensive and exhaustive program for ESSAY every year, it is only natural that we provide the review of this year’s paper too.
Section – A
1)Farming has lost the ability to be a source of sustenance for majority of farmers in India.
Review– It sounds like more of a general studies question rather than an essay. Nonetheless, it is probably one of the easiest one to attempt and everybody knows the data and perspective already.
Why farming has never been an economic-enterprise in India :-
- 68% of India is drought-prone.
- All of India is at the mercy of Monsoon and El-Nino.
- Agriculturally India is classified as “Paddy Culture” and more scientifically as “Intensive subsistence tillage” – what that implies is that Indian farmers do farming for sustenance and the nature of PADDY CULTURE requires huge amount of labour. Contrary to popular perception, application of heavy machinery in this kind of farming system will essentially reduce the output per acre ( there will be no transplantation etc)
- And when 68% may undergo drought in a given year and when 60% people draw their livelihood from it and when if we attain 4% growth in agriculture and call it bumper crop (Inflation rate is more than this, the limits of agricultural growth), essentially tells us that agriculture can not and will not be able to bring people out of vicious circle of poverty. And if we account the level of land degradation, salinization, and fragmentation (due to rise in population number), the issue becomes acute.
- In sum, farming was never a profitable enterprise, and now with global warming, climate change it lost its edge as a means of livelihood too.
- Moreover, India is a water stressed country too (Covered in may of our articles), so water-intensive agriculture also giving rise to water-wars (Karnataka-Tamilnadu sugarcane farmer issue etc) (Part of our GS test series question too)
- It is not that , India does not need agriculture, but India needs less number of people in it ( only 3% American feed the whole population, Norway has only 4% of cultivable land yet it is prosperous and same goes for Singapore and Japan too). We need agriculture for food-security but we don’t have enough alternative employment as well, thus our farmers upon migration to urban land becomes a laborer or takes up any job thrown at him. He is in crisis, and the slogan of Jay Jawan and Jay Kisan seems fading now, given that fact that the farmers of India are loosing everywhere, and out of desperation driven to end their lives at time.(Use data on farmer suicide as well)
Last year, this was a major issue (Latur issues and many other issues) and after analyzing various prospects, and especially after looking at a particular picture, we at UPSCTREE decided to give an essay on the topic last year – The topic was
“ Changing Landscape of rural India”
This picture was the backdrop on which this essay was framed- The article is –Click Here
If we remember correctly, thehindu and other newspapers ran many editorial on this topic and you must show the rural to urban migration and the above data to prove the point that Farming is indeed, in a general sense, lost its edge as a means of livelihood. Many other issues such as rural indebtedness, feminization of agriculture etc also forms core of the essay and must be discussed as well. The core of the suggestions are – removing disguised employment/ de-peopling agriculture, climate-smart agriculture, organic farming, land-reforms and consolidation (more than 80% in India are small and marginal farmers), crop-diversification etc- You can also use Swaminathan Report on agriculture to suggest a way forward (although the report suggest the same thing which you already know)
Of course, the analysis is not exhaustive but a glimpse only. Hope this helps.
Review of next topic to follow.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.