Letters: Focus on self-sufficiency

Apropos the article by Charan Singh and C L Dadhich "A safer future for the Indian farmer" (June 17), there is no doubt that schemes such as the Jan Dhan Yojana can facilitate the efficient and timely disbursement of monetary help to small farmers in times of distress. But the cause of depression among farmers is the erosion of self-sufficiency of villages/blocks in terms of basic needs. Increase in commercial cropping affects the farming community in a lot of ways. It is resource-intensive and this increases their need to borrow. It has opportunity costs since the farmers often reduce or stop food grain cultivation. It also increases dependence on markets both for inputs and the produce. In other words, the community is leveraged financially, as well as operationally - thus prone to risks.

The authors are correct in pointing out that no sooner does a natural disaster hit an area, than exaggerated claims of the value of damage to crops appear in the media. The political process of waiving debts and providing compensation in monetary terms stresses the entire public finance system. A correct assessment procedure of crop damage is part of an efficient institutional mechanism. Since the political will to build the latter is likely to take time, we should start working towards self-sufficiency at the block level.

T Syama Sundar Hyderabad

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