Editorial/24 Dec 2023

On National Farmers’ Day, PM Modi restricted himself to just paying tributes to former Prime Minister and farmers’ leader Chaudhary Charan Singh, and refrained from announcing a legal guarantee of MSP to farmers which is the need of the hour because farmers have been demanding a law for guaranteeing MSP for last few years.

This is also important in the context of PM Modi’s guarantee campaign. That would have made the National Farmers’ Day meaningful and would have been an apt tribute to Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Government is still thinking in a regressive way for farmers. It should start afresh by implementing the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendation which wanted farmers to be paid a Minimum Support Price (MSP) by computing the weighted cost plus a profit margin of 50 per cent (C2+50 percent). Secondly, it should ensure that farmer gets MSP by making the MSP guarantee law and then think on further reforms.

For doing this government should take this bold step urgently and shed the inhibitions that guaranteeing MSP would distort markets.  It will rather help a farmer and agriculture get adjusted in the market in a profitable way.

Noted food and agriculture specialist, Devinder Sharma has rightly underlined that mainstream economics has ensured that farmers remain impoverished. Time to change the mainstream.

Govt should seriously act over it and fast.
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