On February 1, people of India witnessed a budget prepared with a Colonial mindset. This budget is going to make Indian farmers more dependent on the government, it doesn’t empower the farmers.
The British did the same with the farmers, made them depend on the government. After hundreds of years, the present regime is making a conscious effort to make them more vulnerable so that they do not use their own objectivity to choose the government on the basis of its ideology. Budget 2019 includes a big announcement – the major income support scheme for farmers.
Farmers with less than two hectares of land will receive Rs. 6,000 each year. That’s likely to assist 12 crore small and marginal farmers. In the beginning, I would like to talk about the condition of farmers. For two and a half years, the increasing numbers of the suicide of farmers was a big challenge for the government to overcome for its electoral benefit as well as to maintain social order. Due to constant flood and drought, the farmers were abandoned to live in such a miserable condition, which led them commit suicide.
The government should have taken such a decision earlier but it was not possible in the present regime. Now, it has come out with a massive spending plan in a hurry to promote itself as “government for farmers”. But, unfortunately, this scheme is not going to help them. It is a temporary way to solve the problems of farmers because giving them money to buy seeds and other farming related things is not going to empower them.
To empower farmers means to give them the machines and train them to use those machines. I can assure that after doing so, they do not need any further assistance. Mechanization of agriculture would surely empower them but it looks like the government itself does not want to come out with a permanent solution to the problem. At the beginning of civilization, the human race started cultivating crops with help of tools that were available at that time. In the 21st century, India’s first impression for outsiders is as an agrarian country but even now Indian farmers have been cultivating in a conventional way. Example: use of animals such as oxen, etc.
It is the government’s duty to ensure that farmers do not rely on any other source for their food and basic necessities. If they rely on other things for production, we would encounter a food crisis. But, here, the case is very different the government itself wants the farmers to be relied on. Farmers do not have a good and latest generation machine to reduce the investment and workforce. The government should have focused on the mechanization of agriculture in this Budget so that the farmers do not need to be dependent on the government for anything. Mechanization of agriculture would decrease the investment which farmers make.