Bringing back smiles on Farmer’s Face in Punjab.....by Pushpinder Singh Gill

March 8, 2022: Punjab is under scrutiny for the last couple of weeks because of the ritual of assembly elections. All is spoken and written about the State and many such writings are about the precarious state of its finances. Lofty promises are once again in demand, but they fail to address the key issues of the State. 

Thankfully, an opportunity has come when one can freely talk about the real issues and explain in detail what ails the once-prosperous State. When we look around, we find Punjab at crossroads where it cannot live on its past laurels and the future without interventions looks very uncertain. 

The role of successive governments is under analysis as they fail to uplift people’s lives and deliver the promised better future. There is no denying the fact that the governments should be held accountable in a democracy. But, let us put aside the role of governments and focus just on our behavior and the general patterns visible in how we lead our daily lives. This image is very scary and should be reflected upon with utmost honesty if we want to understand the flaws in our society and want a lasting & sustainable change in our lives.

The most persistent question which concerns Punjab has been the difficulties faced by the farming community. It is a common refrain in our society that agriculture is not a profitable business anymore and is the major cause of distress in our state. 

Punjab has approx. 1.5 percent of the total geographical land of India and has been a major contributor of food grains to the Central pool. It is also a fact that the government has been buying the farm produce at MSP from this region for the past many decades.

 It is also a grim reality that the farmers of Punjab are under a debt of approximately One lakh crores taken from private money lenders (Artyias), cooperative banks, public and private banks combined. Why is it that a region which is getting a substantially higher rate than the rest of the country for such a long time is under so much debt? The most common answer if you ask anyone is that cost of agriculture has gone up many folds and the MSP has not grown at the same rate. But price rise is the common factor across the country and should have impacted more in the rest of the country where the MSP is not given. This brings us to the question of finding out what else ails our farming sector which is beyond the scope of the governments and is of our own making.

The first and foremost is the cost of agriculture as the agriculture production in the State is very capital intensive as the State boasts nearly 5 lakh tractors. The state has massive ownership of agricultural machinery which neither goes in proportion to the State’s average land-holding nor is justified by overall requirement. The automation in agriculture has reduced the effective utilization of these tools to a timeline of a month in the entire year yet lakhs of rupees of capital is struck in these implements. 

This high cost can be easily offset by the cooperative methods where a village can jointly own the machinery and these can be used on a rotational timetable basis. There is no dearth of Co-operative Societies in Punjab but they need to diversify on this side & help small and marginal farmers in sharing agrarian tools.

For the last two decades, every farm activity has been done by outsourced labor and this has increased the inputs costs. Most of this labor is migratory and their ever-increasing demand keeps their average wages on the higher side and puts a lot on the stress of farmer’s income. Our new generation is losing touch with the fields and we are missing a golden opportunity of training future class of farmers and our dependence on outsourced labor is constantly increasing.

With the massive influx of paddy, the groundwater is quickly disappearing and the cost of its extraction is touching the skies. Now, most people argue that electricity charges for the tube wells are free for the farmers so what is this cost being talked about. If you are well versed in the farming needs you would recall that the motors used for extracting groundwater were of 10 horsepower earlier. But now due to excessive depletion of groundwater, the water table has receded by hundreds of meters. 

This has resulted in deeper borewells and higher horsepower of motors that can extract water from the ground. Now the motors are of 30 horsepower and the costs have increased tremendously. Add to this the cost of maintenance and boring thereby increasing the debt burden.

Moving from agriculture costs, we should also talk about the changes in our standards of living and spending which do not reflect the true financial position of an individual. Punjab has around 13,000 villages and approximately of 19,000 marriage palaces.

 Along with the high rent of a marriage, the palace comes the cost of decoration, catering and other flashy and exorbitant expenses which could easily be done according to one’s financial capacity. Just trying to organise a bigger function, groom riding a stretch limo while leading the barat, spending lakhs on a two-hour performance of a singer or DJ are all expenses which are done to serve our ego and not as per the necessity of the situation. And the saddest part is that most of the money spent on such function is done after taking it as a loan from the moneylender on high-interest rates.

One of the other major financial spends is on the construction of our houses. Earlier the house was constructed according to the needs of the family and expanded as and when the need arose. Now major construction cost is on paying the architects and designers for imparting it a better aesthetic value.

 The family sizes have shrunk but the houses are constructed according to the latest designs with no thought given to rooms or space required. This has again increased the initial cost as well as the cost of upkeep and maintenance later on which could have been easily avoided. This leads to a further increase in our debt quotient and the interest the farmer is paying to service the debt. 

Most of the youngsters in Punjab are in grip of immigration mania and banks are providing huge loans for sending them abroad. Many experts call it as the start of the uprooting wave whereby hundreds of homes are getting locked every year as their occupants shift abroad. Those who are left behind are desperate to follow and are willing to take any financial risk in search of green pastures. Never in its glorified history, has Punjab ever faced such problems.

What we need to introspect here is that we need to take a hard look at our present state of affairs and realize the changes we need to apply in our thinking and behavior if we want to get out of this unbreakable chain of debt management. We need to teach our youngsters the concept of dignity of labor and we also need to come out of false pride and show off. The best way to spend money is by first earning it. If we can inculcate this practice in our social fabric most of our problems of society can be solved. 

It will be enough to keep the families together and happy and then we can look forward to giving a better shape to the future of our coming generations. Believe me when I say if we start reflecting on the abovesaid changes need in our society we will automatically start looking at our leaders in a different light. 

Our expectations and their delivery will improve and the change we are yearning for in this state can be experienced shortly. A hard look in the mirror, the courage to face the bitter truth is the starting point of our revolution and the earlier we realize this the better it is for our beloved PUNJAB. Let us take this opportunity to bring back the smiles, which are long-awaited.