Sreelatha Menon: Peanuts for the farmer

EAR TO THE GROUND

Inflation rates are making news as TV cameras capture startled children in interior villages having their only meal of the day. Is inflation the cause of their starvation?

The current inflation rates should make many of these families, who are farmers, rejoice at increase in prices of the crops they grow.

Reporters from this newspaper recently went to villages in different parts of the country and spoke to farmers.

The high prices of the commodities were not reflected in the money these farmers got for what they grew. Where imports have been blocked, as in pulses, the farmers have been denied the marginal increase in prices they would have otherwise got.

In fact, every move to check inflation seemed to be directly hurting the farmers, indicating that the government does not seem to consider farmers as consumers.

But with or without inflation, things don't change much for the farmer.

The paddy prices he gets are almost the same as the BPL (below poverty line) price of rice