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In the Covid era physical distancing and isolation may be impossible to follow for those who rely on the support of others to eat dress and bathe

Disability is an issue which has been the least researched. According to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study disability ranges from five per cent in children to 15 per cent in people between 15-59 years of  age and 46 per cent among those aged 60 years and above. In India 2.21 per cent of the total population is physically challenged as per the 2011 census. However it is a matter of great worry that those in the age group of 10-19 years form the major part of the disabled population (17.23 per cent). This implies that India may be losing out on the demographic dividend because divyang (physically challenged) children are not found to be at par with their counterparts when it comes to completing primary and secondary education. It is seen that almost a third of the children without primary education suffer from some degree of disability. This has a ripple down effect on their employment opportunities. In fact unemployment rates among the divyangs are as high as 80 to 90 per cent in some countries. Not only does this leave a damaging effect on the household a higher unemployment rate of the divyang population increases a country’s social expenditure. Moreover family members may have to cut down their work hours or opt out of the labour market to care for them further adding to the financial burden.

Amartya Sen argued the economic loss due to disability through two ideas: ‘Earning handicap’ and ‘Conversion handicap.’ “To achieve the same level of opulence a disabled person may find it harder to get a job or to retain it and may receive lower compensation for work” he says. This is an ‘Earning handicap.’ “To do the same things as an able-bodied person a person with physical disability may need more income than the able-bodied person. To move easily or at all a person who happens to be say crippled by an accident or by illness may need assistance or prosthesis or both. The ‘Conversion handicap’ refers to the disadvantage that a disabled person has in converting money into good living” he adds.

To ensure inclusiveness of the divyang population such that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is attained and no one is left behind the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank realised the need for health interventions to promote equity. The UN refers to assistive technologies (ATs) as pre-conditions to achieving equal opportunities enjoying human rights and living with dignity. Without the aid of ATs employment opportunities for divyangs are significantly reduced. Even when employed labour productivity of divyangs is significantly lower than that of others.

So far the Indian Government does not have a plan on ATs and they are not built-in as basic requirements within the medical system. But time to time ATs are distributed as part of media programmes of politicians. There is little or no planning on how the beneficiaries would maintain or repair the ATs in case of a problem. To the best of our knowledge Indian data on ATs their procurement procedures and the financial hardship in acquiring and maintaining those are absent. Policymakers need to realise that making universal access to ATs is not a charity but a major need to reduce GDP loss.

We are living in a Covid era and most likely we have to live with the virus till a vaccine comes into the market. In effect this implies that one has to continue living with the new norms and maintain social distancing. While the Government’s diktat on social distancing applies to all and imposes financial as well as physical costs it significantly affects divyangs. The crucial question is whether they are in a position to follow the “stay safe” manual as advocated repeatedly by the Government? Physical distancing and self-isolation may be impossible to follow for those who rely on the support of others to eat dress and bathe. The WHO has stated that divyangs may be at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 as frequent washing may not be possible for them due to mobility issues. Divyangs who require additional support may find it difficult to practise physical distancing; it is unlikely that divyangs with intellectual impairments may cope with self-isolation; people with visual disabilities rely on “touch functions for mobility and work” thereby increasing their risk of infection. Further most of the information about the new social norm or on social distancing health information is being distributed through normal media which may not be accessible to people with hearing/visible impairments.

To take care of the needs of divyangs just like the financial package for migrant workers the Government should provide financial compensation for families and care-givers who need to be self-isolated and are prone to infection. At present the Arogya Setu app the principal front for disseminating information on COVID-19 and coping with the same does not address the special needs of divyangs even after activists flagged it. This goes against the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 where it is mandatory to provide all information in accessible formats to divyangs. Till now the rules do not make any exception for these people. This must be rectified at the earliest.

Soumi Roy Chowdhury is Associate Fellow and Sanjib Pohit is Professor at NCAER Views are personal.

The agriculture sector like large and medium industries of the Indian economy also needs a well-organised industry representation.

India has a long history of farm movements. Surplus generated out of the Green Revolution made farmers a politically significant group. Chaudhary Charan Singh was one of the first to identify its potential. He formed the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in 1967 and became the leader of Bharatiya Lok Dal in 1974 after merging the former into six other parties that were in opposition to the Indira Gandhi government. He promoted the interest of rich and middle peasants belonging to middle and backward castes. He fought for the abolition of landlordism consolidation of landholding and resisted taxing agricultural surplus. The farmer leader had also initiated a food procurement scheme in Uttar Pradesh after becoming the chief minister in 1967. This led to significant upward bias in agricultural prices and profitability of agriculture in subsequent decades.

Chaudhary Charan Singh formed the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) in 1978. After his death in 1987 Mahendra Singh Tikait resurrected the organisation in Uttar Pradesh. The BKU took a non-political position which it continues till now to draw its legitimacy. In the 1980s the BKU led movements protesting against high power tariffs and erratic supply. The organisation demanded remunerative prices parity in power rates with other states and lowering of input costs. The dharna organised by Tikait in Meerut in January 1988 attracted lakhs of peasants including women. The Uttar Pradesh government relented to the pressure by providing concessions and including the BKU representatives in the Agricultural Prices Commission and local development bodies. Zoya Hasan in her 1989 paper in Economic and Political Weekly says that the benefits given by the government were more rhetorical than real.

The BKU’s movements of the late 1980s however had limited success. That’s because it was a movement to protect and promote the interests of surplus producers by maximising only their economic returns and did not involve the entire farming community. The leadership belonged to the affluent peasant class— teachers former Army men and retired government officials. The BKU’s demands did not take into account the interests of poor peasants agricultural labourers and artisans. The organisation had no concern for the minimum wage rate. The poor peasant and agricultural labourers who participated in the movement did so due to their primordial loyalties. As a result all groups of the farming community did not emerge as a united force.

Small share in the Atmanirbhar package

The farming community in India has failed to organise big movements and pressurise the government to fulfil its demands in recent times. The stimulus package given by the Narendra Modi government to revive the economy from the shocks of Covid-19 has little to offer to the agricultural sector. The package that accounts for 10.05 per cent of India’s GDP includes fiscal and monetary measures. Only 7 per cent from this economic package has been dedicated to agricultural and allied sectors even when it is most important to invest in this segment of the economy because the migrant labourers who have returned from big cities would ultimately depend on traditional agriculture till the economy revives.

Among all the segments of the Indian economy large and medium industries are probably the best organised with multiple chambers of commerce and industry associations and representations in each state. Most sectors are well placed to propagate their interests with help from sector-specific associations or federations to serve their interests. In spite of lower attention to agriculture and very minimal support given to the migrant labourers there has not been any farmer or labour unrest raising these issues. This reveals the lack of capacity on part of the poor farmers to organise as a group and raise their demands.

A protest of the few

The lack of the farming community’s ability to emerge as a united force across the states and farming class is evident in the ongoing protests against the farm legislation as well.

According to the Shanta Kumar Committee report in 2015 only six per cent of the farmers could sell their produce to government agencies. Hence the ongoing protests serve the interest of only a tiny portion of the farming community.

The protest is intense in states where the value of procurement is higher and not necessarily in states that have more procurement centres. While more than 60 per cent of the procurement (in terms of value) of wheat takes place in Punjab and Haryana only 13 per cent procurement centres are from these two states. Bihar where the APMC Act was repealed in 2006 still accounts for 30 per cent procurement centres with a miniscule 0.02 per cent procurement making these centres economically unimportant for the farmers.

Similarly 25 per cent procurement of paddy takes place in Punjab where only 3 per cent procurement centres are operating. Furthermore 44 per cent procurement centres are in West Bengal from where a meagre 4 per cent sourcing takes place. This means that the procurement system benefits only a disproportionately lower percentage of farmers — those with very high value of produce.  And many of the procurement centres in certain states are economically unimportant for the farmers.  It is very natural that the ongoing protests cannot have an all India presence and cannot cover all sections of the farming community.

The inability of the farmers to sell their produce on time and get remunerative prices is a real problem. Although India has modernised in many areas the interlocking of product credit labour and land markets in rural pockets continues to thrive. We need farm movements that demand facilitation of better linkages with markets that practice fair dealings.

The farm movements in India are plagued by overrepresentation of rich farmers as a political force. They provide the critical mass without which the protests cannot snowball. However agitations dominated by a few rich farmers may not solve the problem of the farming community as a whole. The interests of all groups have to be advanced. The richer farmers have to set an agenda for the benefit of the poorer and vulnerable members. The participation of the latter would benefit the former as well as the whole farming community. The community needs to emerge as a unified force to bargain for and usher in meaningful policy and reforms.

Indranil De is Associate Professor Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) Anand. Sanjib Pohit is Professor National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) Delhi. Views are personal.

The farm sector will attract private investment only if traders are assured that the govt will not put a constraint in their selling and purchasing price.

The outset the three farm Bills brought in by the Narendra Modi government seem to create a level-playing field in the farm sector. They empower the farmer to sell their produce anywhere and to anyone who offers them the best price. There is no need for the farmer to pay mandi tax if the mandis are not providing any additional services.

The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance 2020 lays down the nomenclature to usher in contract farming in India. Companies engaging farmers in contract farming and providing crop advisory input and assured buyback may turn out to be a boon for the farmers. Of course the government can always have a strong oversight on the way the companies engage with farmers and can anytime blacklist those that violate the prescribed norms.

The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 is progressive too because it seeks to end adhocism in the form of stock controls which act as a disincentive for the companies wanting to invest in agricultural infrastructure. Until now the manufacturing sector was governed by rules similar to those enshrined in the new agricultural ordinance. With similar rules now set to be applied to agriculture the ecosystem for investment will become uniform for the two sectors.

On top of it the Modi government has announced that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) will continue to be extended to farmers. So it looks like a win-win solution for the farmers. Why then is a section of farmers up in arms against these Bills and are on the streets?

Right reforms wrong timing

These reforms are needed to usher in corporatisation of Indian agriculture and to draw in private investment and the logistics thereof. Companies will invest in infrastructure and food processing only if they are given the freedom to procure and store whatever input is required for their business. But what explains the timing of these reforms?

The economy is in the doldrums due to Covid-19 and private investment at low ebb. From where does the Modi government expect the investment to flow in? One may argue that far-reaching reforms usually take place when the economy is in the downturn just like it happened in 1991 when India was on the verge of a debt default. However if one recollects correctly Manmohan Singh pushed for a gradual reform and not a shock therapy that was prescribed by American economist Jeffrey D. Sachs for Russia in the early 1990s. The Indian approach yielded quick dividends whereas it was a lost decade for Russia. So the timing and path to reforms do matter.

Agriculture is a state subject. Consequently some of the states will definitely take the Union government to court to stop the implementation of the Bills. The Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan has issued an order that states: “All the warehouses under the Food Corporation of India (FCI) Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and Rajasthan State Warehousing Corporation (RSWC) meant for procurement on minimum support price (MSP) are notified as procurement centres under the state APMC Act.” “At these centres mandi fee will be charged as per the Section 2(m) (ii) of the Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance 2020” adds the order issued by the director of the state agricultural marketing directorate Tara Chand Meena on 7 August. The Rajasthan government’s order ensured that despite the central ordinance stating otherwise farmers will not be exempted from paying the mandi fee to the state government while procuring agricultural commodities. There will be legal logjam in the coming months/years given the slow space of India’s judicial system. Thus it is unlikely that private investment will flow in in near future.

What will attract private investment?

The farm sector will attract private investment only if traders/corporates are assured that the government will not put a binding constraint in their selling and purchasing price. Recent restrictions on the export of onions due to a surge in domestic price does not give the right signal. Such bans give the message that there will be government intervention if the domestic price of a particular commodity rises. The interest of the urban voters often supersedes that of agricultural farmers in the government’s bargaining frame.

The Modi government has also hiked the MSP for wheat and five other rabi crops. It is common knowledge that farmers are able to sell their produce at MSP only in a few states. Although the government announces procurement prices for 23 crops effectively procurement by Food Corporation of India/others at MSP takes place only for a few crops. So MSP to some extent remains an illusion for farmers in many states.

APMC and crop pricing

In agricultural discourse it is said that repeal of the APMCs (Agriculture Produce Market Committees) is a must if farmers have to get a good price and bypass the middle-man which has been effectively done with these reforms. However one needs more than that for private investment to flow in for production and development of agro-logistics and marketing if one goes by the example of Bihar. The state abolished the APMC Act in 2006 but did not usher in private investment for the creation of a new market or strengthen facilities in the existing one as NCAER (2019)’s study on “Agricultural Diagnostics for the State of Bihar in India” indicates . On the contrary over 90 per cent of the output of crops including paddy wheat maize lentil gram mustard and banana is sold within the village to traders and commission agents at prices much lower than the MSP.

As such the bargaining power of a farmer is minuscule vis–a-vis traders. To increase their bargaining power the government always talks of promoting and strengthening farmer producer organisations (FPOs). Group marketing not only reduces the length of marketing channels and marketing costs but also increases farmers’ voice. However this has not happened till now in Bihar even 14 years after the APMC act was repealed.

The same story is repeated in the case of crop insurance. The corporates invariably take them for a ride at the time of claim adjustment for crop damages.

In hindsight a regulatory body is a must to protect the farmers’ interest and to check that the corporates/traders follow the rules of competition and not resort to cartelisation and exploit the farmers.

Sanjib Pohit is a Professor at NCAER. Views are personal.