Tackling farm distress in a focussed manner

But, an earlier study on the issue by A Amarender Reddy — he is one of the key architects of the index — in 2021 in the journal Land (tinyurl.com/2bafebmw) suggests that the idea of what could be described as a pilot version of FDI was to create a multidimensional index at the farmer and sub-district levels. “Based on the result, the study recommends a location-specific distress management package based on various dimensions of the FDI,” the paper says. “Although the Indian government has allocated more resources to agriculture and several programs were initiated to improve the agricultural sector, agrarian distress is silently spreading across all the states. It seems that all these programmes and schemes are disjointed and function independently of each other. Therefore, agrarian challenges and various ongoing programs should be brought together under one umbrella,” it says.

Prima facie, this seems like a good idea that could dovetail a lot of existing spending by the states and the Centre to boost farmer incomes. However, care should be taken on at least two fronts. One, the federal structure should be dealt with sensitively in tying government spending to movements in FDI. Two, optimising existing spending on farming via the new FDI should not be confused with the larger transformation challenge of creating better non-paying jobs outside agriculture.