Farmers Movement Archive

Unions cheer, but still want a law for MSP

Farm unions on Friday welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to roll back three agricultural laws they had been opposing for a year, but the government has to now contend with a tougher demand – a law guaranteeing minimum support prices or MSP to cultivators for their produce.“It is the victory of millions of farmers who did not give up. It is a victory for democracy but a partial victory. We had two demands, one (was to) repeal the three laws. Second, give us a legal guarantee of minimum support price, something the prime minister had himself demanded when he was chief minister of Gujarat. That has not been considered yet. That struggle will go on,” said Yogendra Yadav, a key leader of the farmers’ movement.Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farm leader from Uttar Pradesh who was in Maharashtra’s Palghar for an event when Modi made the announcement, said it wasn’t time yet to end their yearlong protest.“We are not withdrawing the protests. We will wait and watch to see what happens. Also, we want a law on MSP (minimum support prices),” he said.The Samyukt Kisan Morcha, a platform of farm unions protesting the laws, is preparing to go ahead with planned mahapanchayats in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.The reforms Modi said his government would rescind aimed to allow businesses to freely trade farm produce outside regulated markets, called mandis, permit private traders to stockpile large quantities of essential commodities for future sales and lay down a national framework for contract farming.Farmers feared the new economic agenda could pave the way for the government to stop buying staples at federally fixed minimum support prices (MSP) and would leave them at the mercy of private buyers.The government has insisted it will still buy staples at MSP, but farmers have demanded a law that prohibits purchase of major farm produce below state-set minimum prices.MSPs, which began with the Green Revolution, are set such that they offer 50% returns over cost but mainly benefit paddy and wheat growers because the government procures only these two commodities in sufficiently large quantities.Indian farmers receive lower-than-international prices for much of their produce because of increasing costs of cultivation, inadequate markets and the government’s policy to keep food prices low.This has worsened agriculture’s terms of trade, measured as a ratio of prices of agri products to prices of manufactured items. The crisis, therefore, is not one of low production, but of low prices.An MSP is an important policy tool that helped achieve food self-sufficiency because it gave farmers assured prices. It is an important price signal, but does not have statutory backing.While the government announces MSP for 23 major crops, setting them at 1.5 times the cost of cultivation to account for inflation, analysts say a blanket law mandating that no trader can buy any farm commodity below this threshold price could be tough to implement.“The demand for a law on MSP will elicit a bigger response from farmers now because it will be a direct step towards higher income. It involves huge central expenditure and this will be a bigger problem for the Modi government,” said Sudhir Panwar, a professor at Lucknow University.The most immediate impact of such a law will be higher food inflation.Every percentage point increase in MSPs leads to a 15-basis point increase in inflation, according to Nomura economist Sonal Varma. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Economists say an MSP mechanism that ignores dynamics such as demand and global prices, creates distortions. If it is not profitable for private traders to buy at federally fixed MSP, when demand is low, then the private sector will simply exit the markets. In such a scenario, the government simply cannot be a monopoly buyer of all produce.The government already procures staggering quantities of surplus rice and wheat, which have become unmanageable. The government on average holds at least 70 million tonnes of rice and wheat in federal stocks, whereas food security norms require reserves of 41.1 million tonnes as of July and 30.7 million tonnes as of October each year.If MSP is made mandatory, then India’s agricultural exports could become non-competitive because the government’s assured prices are way higher than both domestic and international market prices. No trader would want to buy at a higher price and export at a lower rate.According to economist Ashok Gulati, the cost of procuring, storing and distributing rice to the poor comes to about ₹37 a kg. For wheat, it is around ₹27 a kg. The cost to company (CTC) of labour of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) is six to eight times higher than private labour. Therefore, market prices of rice and wheat are much lower than what it costs FCI to buy them.But the MSP policy benefits farmers only in a handful of states. The 70th round of National Sample Survey showed only 13.5% of paddy growers and 16.2% of wheat growers actually received MSPs.While MSPs have incentivised foodgrains over other crops, they have given rise to serious imbalances of water and land resources and shifted land away from crops, such as pulses and oilseeds, necessitating costly imports. Also, MSPs, as administered prices, tend to distort market prices. They often ignore the demand side, international prices, export competitiveness and ecological impacts of crops such as paddy.This also means surplus stocks can’t be exported without a subsidy, which invites World Trade Organisation’s objections. WTO rules cap government procurement for subsidized food programmes by developing countries at 10% of the total value of agricultural production based on 1986-88 prices in dollar terms.“Support to farmers can never be in question. But support in the form of MSP, which is market-distorting, raises questions, such as ‘whether can we move to other ways of supporting farmers that cause less collateral damage,” said Pravesh Sharma, a fellow at New Delhi’s Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

Hindustan Times

20-11-2021

India