Vishnu Teja Donadula

High School Finalist, Grade 10
Plano, Texas

Reaping Injustice- The Sad Plight of the Indian Farmer

A farmer in Telangana spends months tending to his tomato crop, persevering against unpredictable weather and tirelessly tending to the plants he took a loan out to grow. Yet when his efforts pay off and he raises a good harvest, he has no choice but to sell his entire harvest for less than 3 rupees per kilogram, an amount so meager that it won’t even cover the transportation costs to the processing facility. Yet for consumers, the same kilogram of tomatoes will run them upwards of 60 rupees to buy in urban supermarkets. Unfortunately, this is the current situation many Indian farmers are experiencing. Farmers are being forced to battle unpredictable market prices and worsening weather conditions all while receiving minimal support from the government. This cycle is one of India’s most urgent developmental problems– even a brief examination of the current situation reveals how this volatile cycle keeps pushing farmers further into debt, poverty, and mistreatment. Farmers in India are faced with the task of feeding the nation’s 1.4 billion people, yet they are continuously pressured to sell their harvest at exceptionally low prices, placing them into an inescapable trap of exploitation.

The Challenges

The main challenge for farmers is the fluctuation of market prices and the lack of a minimum support price. For example, in years of tomato shortages, farmers were able to get prices of up to 100 rupees/kg for their harvest, yet during the recent surplus, many were able to only find prices of 2 rupees/kg. This instability has been worsened by a lack of a guaranteed Minimum Support Price, or MSP for many crops. This price allows farmers to get a guaranteed price on their harvest even during surplus years, allowing them to mitigate their losses to a certain extent. However, MSPs have only been imposed on crops deemed ‘essential’ by the government, such as rice and wheat (Saaliq, Pathi). Thus, many vegetable and fruit farmers remain unprotected from market volatility, allowing companies and middlemen to legally exploit them.

Another key challenge is the victimization of farmers by middlemen. This problem is ironically most common in government-regulated Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs), which are markets that were set up to facilitate transparency and fair prices.

Middlemen commonly control the trade in the APMCs and often participate in acts like collusion in order to artificially lower wholesale prices and thus increase their profits. Because of these middlemen, farmers often have no direct access to markets and are usually kept in the dark from knowing the actual market prices in cities and towns. After buying the harvest from farmers, middlemen then inflate prices drastically, often causing consumers to wrongly blame farmers for the cost of produce, pressuring them to lower their prices even further. Most of the time, farmers often receive only 25-40% of the final retail cost, exemplifying how badly farmers are swindled of their righteous compensation (Rajvanshi).

The Effects

For the longest time in India’s history, food security has been a national priority. After independence in 1947, India struggled with growing enough food to sustain the large and rapidly growing number of people within its borders. Famines and shortages were common and took a heavy toll on rural populations, causing many deaths from hunger and malnutrition. In the 1960s, however, the Green Revolution sparked the rise of high-yield varieties of grains such as rice and wheat, transforming the famine-prone country into an agricultural powerhouse. During this period, the farmer became established as a central figure in the country’s history, symbolizing India’s resilience in the face of uncertainty.

In recent decades, however, the promise of food security has tragically betrayed the farmers who have strived so hard to achieve it. These days, outdated policies from the Green Revolution continue to favor farmers growing grains like wheat and rice, while farmers growing fruits and vegetables have been ignored and left without any price guarantees or protections. This crisis has led farmers with the task of feeding our nation to the point where they can no longer even feed themselves.

The impacts of this are clear and heart-wrenching. Farmers are forced to pull their children out of school to help in the fields, without a promise that their hard labor will be of avail. Furthermore, generational debt leads to broken families and humiliation, causing over 112,000 farmers to commit suicide in the past decade, with some researchers reporting the actual number to be up to five times higher due to the stigma around reporting suicides (Fletch). When the farmer suffers, so does the soul of rural India. We risk losing all of the progress we have made in securing food for all 1.4 billion people in our country if we do not step up to make amends for the years of inactivity that have led up until this point.

The Solution

Although in this situation the push for justice is long overdue, it is still not too late.

Everyone, regardless of where they live or what they do can help tackle this problem by raising awareness and advocating for change.

One of the easiest ways to help address this dire situation is by simply posting about it on social media. Additionally, using hashtags such as #NoFarmersNoFood and  #SupportFarmers, allows for more people to see the post and to reach more people who care about the issue. Posting about the injustices farmers face in India, allows people from all over the world to take notice and become aware of the situation. This is crucial because no meaningful change can take place without there being general awareness about the problem and how to combat it.

Another meaningful way to positively impact farmers in India is by donating to and volunteering with NGOs supporting Indian farmers and agriculture. Supporting high-impact and financially transparent NGOs like Digital Green and the Deccan Development Society allows farmers to gain more support and resources from a community dedicated to helping them, allowing them to get fairer prices for their harvests, and combat exploitation.

Finally, the best way to create lasting change and help eradicate this problem is by pushing elected officials to take action to help farmers. By pressuring public officials to introduce new legislation aimed at helping stop the exploitation of farmers and changing MSP policies to encompass more crops, we can help create an agricultural system that protects the livelihood and dignity of those who feed our country.

Conclusion

Indian farmers are the backbone of the nation and deserve more for their tireless work in helping feed the world's most populous country. They sow seeds yet reap injustice for their harvests. It is crucial that we address this developmental problem by guaranteeing farmers a price for their produce and ending the exploitation of them before it starts to significantly affect the food security of the nation. The future of India depends on its farmers, and although the situation looks grim, if we can all come together and help address this one singular issue, we can help save hundreds of thousands of lives from suicide and help farming become a respected and sustainable career again.