A lot of discussion, breaking news, hue & cry, sms/whatsapp jokes on "ghar ki murgi daal barabar" etc are around on the subject mentioned.. as if suddenly someone has swiped the magic wand and inflation has come... as if someone purposefully keeps the prices up...
Here, I surely doesn't negate the involvement of Middlemen's nexus and indirect support of Politicians in ensuring stocks and creating artificial scarcity in the market, but the pain is something more deeper more bigger.
I was trying to analyse the inflation rate in India over years...
The graph above indicates the inflation (mehangai) from 1958 till 2014. The orange line is drawn at 5%. I was surprised to note that the inflation line was overlapping this orange line in year 1999-2005 period only. If I say this was Vajpayi ji's era, people would paint me a BJP or Sangh supporter. Ironically the same trend is visible from 2014 onward, but it can be claimed may be 2020 or 2025 if my assertion is correct or not... However, one thing is sure, that inflation has never be under control in Congress dominated years.
The above data led me to peep into some other figures also, like Population growth, cultivators (farmers with land for agriculture) and laborers (who actually plough the field). The data has been summarized below in graph form.
While the population growth has remain steady over years till 2010, growth numbers in farmers has not improved. Since land parcel is a limited resources and cannot increase like population, with growth in number of farmers, the land parcel/farmer is bound to decrease. May be due to Industrialization and more promising private jobs, people were less interested towards farming. A similar trend is visible in Laborers also. The growth in labor class population who actually do farming has not increased much, compared to the population to be fed. One good thing is post 2010, people became conscious of not producing children like earlier case, or may be due to higher inflation and lower earning, people started restricting their family tree to only needed number of peoples. (May be the consumption of Birth Control Products have increased since 2010 - this may need another investigation!)
Since I could not get much from the raw data collected from reliable websites, I tried to work on various ratios, viz., Population over Farmers, Population over Labourers, and Farmers over Labourers. The graph gave a meaningful outcome.
As expected the ratio of Population vs. Farmers or Farming Land is ever increasing, indicates that dependency on per farmer to feed to entire population keeps increasing. The ratio that used to be around 6 in 1970's when their were no food scarcity, when people were using traditional method of agriculture and were able to feed to entire country, has risen to over 11 i.e., almost double. I doubt if we have made that Industrialized revolution in Agriculture to meet the double of demand in last 40 years!
Thanks to the new generation's appetite of eating anything dried, fried, grilled and so more, the dependency of Laborers growing crops for population has decreased. Earlier laborers used to grow for 13 whereas, now the have a dependency of only 8. This might also be a cause of concern, and an inefficiency mark on the productivity and work quality of laborers. Earlier, people were farmers by Choice, now people go for farming because they don't have 'any other choice'.
The third ratio is more worrisome. No. of farmers over laborers are reducing. This indicates that people who are owner of Agricultural lands are not interested in farming. The reasons could be many, including.
1. Farming is no more a profitable business.
2. Farming doesn't add a brand value.
3. Farmers are not respected/regarded.
4. Middlemen are eating too much of profit margin and not sharing the profit to farmers.
5. The concept of 'direct from farmers' as coined by e-commerce is also not helping farmers, but helping e-com companies in increasing their bottom-lines, by ensuring a higher margin.
6. The government policies, may sound foolproof, but too many fools make sure that the policy remains fool on papers.
So, when total land parcel is limited, when Industrialization is in full swing, when the Builder-Industry-Politics-Bureaucracy nexus is more than powerful in ensuring Agricultural lands are snatched from farmers and declare Industrial Land (the CLU (Change of Land Use law - abuse on farming lands), when farmers are not heard, but left to commit suicide so that petty politics can be done on their death, when none of the policy makers are willing to take holistic view where is the enabler, motivation for farmers to grow food for ever increasing population.
A farmer which used to plough my ancestral fields, used to produce 50 tonnes of rice (for example) per acre of land in 1980's. He still produces that amount only. Where is the productivity? Where is Industrialization? Where is incentive?
So when demand is more, supply is less - the prices shall go UP. Its simple economics of demand-supply theory.
This is further aggravated with some greedy stockists/middlemen who are cash rich. So we are bound to eat pulses at the price of chicken. Chicken farming has got industrialized. With some hormone injection, the small chicken develops as full grown chicken...
Today it is pulses, Onion has just shown some indication and ensured that whole Country cries. I am sure Potato shall also be as pricey as it can be. Its just a matter of time.
Unless there is fund allocation, fund rotation and vigilance is put of utilization, efficiency and support to farmers, I don't see any future other than some dirty jokes, some politics, some suicides, hue & cry and heavy import (leading to dollar outflow, further weakening of rupee). So guys enjoy.
Never say now that India is the land of Farmers. Never say now that Agriculture has been India's big asset.
I think time has come when IITians, NITians and MBBS students should consider farming as an alternative. It is time when research agencies start working on revolutionizing the methods of farming. It is time when Industries like ITC, HUL, Godrej, Reliance, etc come forward and pay 2% of their profit in Agriculture investments/research/development as part of their CSR activity.
Thanks for being patient, and reading it intently, I would like to see your healthy views and counter views.
Here, I surely doesn't negate the involvement of Middlemen's nexus and indirect support of Politicians in ensuring stocks and creating artificial scarcity in the market, but the pain is something more deeper more bigger.
I was trying to analyse the inflation rate in India over years...
The graph above indicates the inflation (mehangai) from 1958 till 2014. The orange line is drawn at 5%. I was surprised to note that the inflation line was overlapping this orange line in year 1999-2005 period only. If I say this was Vajpayi ji's era, people would paint me a BJP or Sangh supporter. Ironically the same trend is visible from 2014 onward, but it can be claimed may be 2020 or 2025 if my assertion is correct or not... However, one thing is sure, that inflation has never be under control in Congress dominated years.
The above data led me to peep into some other figures also, like Population growth, cultivators (farmers with land for agriculture) and laborers (who actually plough the field). The data has been summarized below in graph form.
While the population growth has remain steady over years till 2010, growth numbers in farmers has not improved. Since land parcel is a limited resources and cannot increase like population, with growth in number of farmers, the land parcel/farmer is bound to decrease. May be due to Industrialization and more promising private jobs, people were less interested towards farming. A similar trend is visible in Laborers also. The growth in labor class population who actually do farming has not increased much, compared to the population to be fed. One good thing is post 2010, people became conscious of not producing children like earlier case, or may be due to higher inflation and lower earning, people started restricting their family tree to only needed number of peoples. (May be the consumption of Birth Control Products have increased since 2010 - this may need another investigation!)
Since I could not get much from the raw data collected from reliable websites, I tried to work on various ratios, viz., Population over Farmers, Population over Labourers, and Farmers over Labourers. The graph gave a meaningful outcome.
As expected the ratio of Population vs. Farmers or Farming Land is ever increasing, indicates that dependency on per farmer to feed to entire population keeps increasing. The ratio that used to be around 6 in 1970's when their were no food scarcity, when people were using traditional method of agriculture and were able to feed to entire country, has risen to over 11 i.e., almost double. I doubt if we have made that Industrialized revolution in Agriculture to meet the double of demand in last 40 years!
Thanks to the new generation's appetite of eating anything dried, fried, grilled and so more, the dependency of Laborers growing crops for population has decreased. Earlier laborers used to grow for 13 whereas, now the have a dependency of only 8. This might also be a cause of concern, and an inefficiency mark on the productivity and work quality of laborers. Earlier, people were farmers by Choice, now people go for farming because they don't have 'any other choice'.
The third ratio is more worrisome. No. of farmers over laborers are reducing. This indicates that people who are owner of Agricultural lands are not interested in farming. The reasons could be many, including.
1. Farming is no more a profitable business.
2. Farming doesn't add a brand value.
3. Farmers are not respected/regarded.
4. Middlemen are eating too much of profit margin and not sharing the profit to farmers.
5. The concept of 'direct from farmers' as coined by e-commerce is also not helping farmers, but helping e-com companies in increasing their bottom-lines, by ensuring a higher margin.
6. The government policies, may sound foolproof, but too many fools make sure that the policy remains fool on papers.
So, when total land parcel is limited, when Industrialization is in full swing, when the Builder-Industry-Politics-Bureaucracy nexus is more than powerful in ensuring Agricultural lands are snatched from farmers and declare Industrial Land (the CLU (Change of Land Use law - abuse on farming lands), when farmers are not heard, but left to commit suicide so that petty politics can be done on their death, when none of the policy makers are willing to take holistic view where is the enabler, motivation for farmers to grow food for ever increasing population.
A farmer which used to plough my ancestral fields, used to produce 50 tonnes of rice (for example) per acre of land in 1980's. He still produces that amount only. Where is the productivity? Where is Industrialization? Where is incentive?
So when demand is more, supply is less - the prices shall go UP. Its simple economics of demand-supply theory.
This is further aggravated with some greedy stockists/middlemen who are cash rich. So we are bound to eat pulses at the price of chicken. Chicken farming has got industrialized. With some hormone injection, the small chicken develops as full grown chicken...
Today it is pulses, Onion has just shown some indication and ensured that whole Country cries. I am sure Potato shall also be as pricey as it can be. Its just a matter of time.
Unless there is fund allocation, fund rotation and vigilance is put of utilization, efficiency and support to farmers, I don't see any future other than some dirty jokes, some politics, some suicides, hue & cry and heavy import (leading to dollar outflow, further weakening of rupee). So guys enjoy.
Never say now that India is the land of Farmers. Never say now that Agriculture has been India's big asset.
I think time has come when IITians, NITians and MBBS students should consider farming as an alternative. It is time when research agencies start working on revolutionizing the methods of farming. It is time when Industries like ITC, HUL, Godrej, Reliance, etc come forward and pay 2% of their profit in Agriculture investments/research/development as part of their CSR activity.
Thanks for being patient, and reading it intently, I would like to see your healthy views and counter views.
