'Low' paddy MSP irks Punjab farmers

Unhappy at the minimum support price of Rs 850 per quintal for the common variety of rice, and Rs 880 quintal for Grade A and a subsequent bonus of Rs 50 per quintal of rice, farmers in Punjab organised a “Rail Roko” agitation (jamming the rail network in the state) on October 20.

Talking to Business Standard the president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Punjab), Balbir Singh Rajewal, said the farmers were highly disappointed. Before the transplantation of paddy this season, the Commission for Agricultural Cost and Prices had recommended the MSP of paddy to be Rs 1,000 per quintal for the coarse variety and Rs 1,050 per quintal for the A grade.

After the announcement, the labour cost increased three times, the cost of pesticides and weedicides shot up 60 per cent and the price of diesel also increased. So the present MSP would make most of the farmers indebted, he said.

He added that of the total paddy produced in Punjab, farmers grew 98 per cent of the Grade A paddy, which should be priced at about Rs 1,810 per quintal.

Punjab farmers will suffer the most because the state contributes 60 per cent of the total central procurement, according to him. Bhupinder Singh Mann, former MP and farmers' leader, said the bonus was too little and too late. "Even last year’s bonus has not been recovered by most of the farmers because of the slow delivery mechanism," he said.

According to Mann, the farmers are having two problems this year because the restriction put on the export of the 1121 variety as basmati has created an artificial glut in the market and farmers cannot compensate their loss on government procurement by selling in the open market.

Some of the basmati varieties that were sold at Rs 4,400 per quintal last year could not get even half its price this year in the open market, he added.

The meetings of the Punjab farmers’ bodies with the Prime Minister and the Union agriculture minister have failed to draw their attention about the unrest among the farmers.

Since agriculture debt waiver benefited only a small number of farmers in north the larger section is annoyed. Now the unremunerative minimum support price of paddy has accentuated their resentment.