In the past two decades, condition of farmers in India has been deteriorating rapidly. According to a rough estimate, nearly 300,000 farmers have committed suicide so far. For many years the numbers have been rising.

Government has not published data since 2016. Sometime back government published data on farmers’ suicides for 2016, according to which the number was less than in 2015. However, some experts don’t believe this number to be real.

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Plight of farmers is also reflected from the fact that share of agriculture which used to be 25 percent of GDP in 1990-91 has dipped to nearly 15 percent now. The saddest thing is that per capita income in urban India is approximately 9 times that of per capita income in rural India. The present government has announced its resolve to double farmers’ income by 2022.

All departments of the government and NITI Aayog are engaged in formulating policies and plans to achieve this target. It’s being contemplated that to achieve this goal we need to adopt two-pronged strategy of giving remunerative price to farmers’ produce and reducing cost of cultivation.

Along with this we can supplement farmers’ income by encouraging dairy and animal husbandry, horticulture, fishing, mushroom farming, forestry, poultry etc. If all these measures are adopted, farming which has turned into a loss-making proposition could exhibit a turnaround.

Condition of the farmers is no secret. The crisis is becoming unbearable for them and they are going on agitation mode. To address the rural crisis, government has announced grant of minimum support price no less than cost plus 50 percent, which was also the election promise of the ruling party. It’s important to note that previously this MSP was applicable to only a few items, which will now be extended to all commodities.

Apart from this, another important step the government has taken is that Kisan Credit Cards (KCC), which were available to only land-owning farmers, could now be offered to landless rural people too engaged in fishing and animal husbandry. This is being considered to be an important step as cheap agricultural loans could now be extended to these occupations as well.

Although, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has constantly been engaged in making schemes and programmes to improve the condition of farmers, confusion is apparent amongst other policy-makers and government’s advisers.

In the Economic Survey 2017-18, presented before the budget, it was said without mincing words that government’s priority should be to flush farmers out of agriculture. Adding insult to the injury of the farmers, the Economic Survey quotes Dr. Ambedkar warning about the dangers of romanticising rural India. He famously derided the village as “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism,” thereby complementing the Lewisian economic insight that in the long run people need to move and be moved out of agriculture for non-economic reasons. It is known to all that author of the Economic Survey is Chief Economic Advisor.

Economic reasons to flush farmers out of agriculture are enumerated by many other ‘economists’ and policy-makers. They say that since productivity is very low in Indian agriculture, therefore to increase their incomes they should be shunted out and sent to manufacturing and service sector. In their obsession with this argument, they don’t feel necessary to explain if job opportunities are available in manufacturing and services.

This is not the first time that such policy prescriptions are being offered to end agricultural crisis. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also used to give these policy prescriptions when he was Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government and also when he himself became PM.

Former Governor of RBI Raghuram Rajan leaves no opportunity in making such suggestions. Very recently, he said that India needs to come out of agriculture and make a shift to industry and services. The argument of these learned economists and policy-makers is that this will help raise incomes of people engaged in agriculture.

But they conveniently forget that there are hardly any employment opportunities in the non-agriculture sector. Condition of urban slums is pathetic. These slums have become centres of dirt, disease and insecurity, crime and anti-social activities. We note that in the last three decades hardly any employment opportunities have been created in the manufacturing sector.

Service sector also has very limited employment opportunities available for unskilled and uneducated labour. One can’t believe that these policymakers are unaware of these ground realities. Despite that, their insistence on flushing rural population out creates doubts about their intentions.

These policymakers always try to blame low productivity in agriculture for the plight of Indian farmers. They argue that all over the world development happened only by shifting rural population to the urban areas.

Therefore, their suggestion has always been to follow the same path. However, they conveniently forget that villages and farming play a major role not only for food security of the nation but also employment for more than half of the working population.

Since there is dearth of employment opportunities outside rural areas, we need to provide gainful employment to the rural population (both land-owing farmers and landless labour) at their doorstep.

We can create this employment by promoting dairy and animal husbandry, mushroom farming, poultry, forestry, horticulture, fishing, food processing etc. Because of the policy makers’ obsession with migrating rural population to urban areas, no significant efforts have been made in this direction.

The writer is Associate Professor, PGDAV College, University of Delhi.