 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I'm Paranjoy Gohar Thakurtha and with me here in the studio I have Palagumi Sainath. He really needs no introduction, a senior journalist, a Maxis Airward winner, an activist and currently very very concerned about the agrarian crisis in the country and he is one of the persons engaged in trying to put together this long march of farmers, farm workers, the dispossessed sections of Indian society to converge onto the national capital at the end of November. In the first part of this discussion I have with him, we are going to look at the agrarian crisis. Sainath, you say that India's agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian, that's what you've written. You said it's an entire crisis of our society, perhaps even a civilizational crisis. I mean why do you make this statement? It's in fact not just about the loss of production, not just about the loss of lives, it's also about the loss of our own humanity. We've sat by quite comfortably for 20 years during which 3,00,000 farmers have taken their own lives in suicide. There has got to be something very wrong with us to be able to act as if the world is perfectly normal and things go on normally. The crisis is also way beyond the agrarian because every other section, all other sections of society are being affected by it. Within agrarian itself what do we mean? It means it's not just a farming crisis, but a crisis of the larger agrarian society. Their livelihoods and also it's linked to what's happening in urban India, correct? Pretty much. Also you've seen the biggest migrations in our history. The 2011 census hints as much. For the first time urban India added more human beings to its population than rural India did to its population. And you believe this has a lot to do with loss of livelihoods, distressed, farm distressed in agriculture? It's not just a question of what I believe. It's also the fact that if you look between the 91 census and the 2011 census, 15 million farmers have dropped out. The number of farmers in 2011 census is 15 million fewer than they were in 1991, which means that they've been dropping out at the rate of more than 2000 a day. Every 24 hours there are 2000 fewer farmers. First 10 years, 91 to 2001, 7.2 million fewer farmers. Second 10 years till 2011, 7.7 million fewer farmers. That's about 15 million or 14.9 million. So where do they go? Well, some of them have moved to the cities, some of them have moved. Migrations is not just about going to the cities. There is village to village migration, rural to rural, rural to urban, urban to urban, a tiny element of urban to rural. And then there is the footloose migration where people are just going about looking anywhere where they can get work for 10 days, 20 days a month. So that kind of complete insecurity has come into many of the agrarian classes. But where have the bulk of the farmers gone? In the census abstract, primary census abstract on agriculture, you just have to look at the next column. As the numbers of farmers declines dramatically, the numbers of agricultural laborers is exploding, which means that today many of the agricultural laborers of today were yesterday's farmers. That's a gigantic crisis, that's a huge crisis. And when you say that farming has perhaps become the most risky profession in this country, I mean far more than playing the stock markets or gambling, that it has become that the very section of our society that is responsible for providing you food is engaged in the riskiest of all professions. And you are saying the entire scale of the crisis, the magnitude of the crisis is being covered up today because the government's National Crime Records Bureau is not publishing data pertaining to suicides of farmers for the last two years or thereabouts. And you also allege that the data that has been put out in the public domain is being manipulated. You've gone to the extent of calling it fraudulent because certain states like Chhattisgarh and West Bengal have claimed that there have been no suicides by farmers. Why don't you elaborate on this point a little more? Well, okay, first of all, the National Crime Records Bureau was a division of the Union Home Ministry. Its data, the NCRB and its statisticians and its monitors, they themselves have done no harm to the data. They have not fiddled the data. They have not, the data that they were publishing was the closest we have to authentic, but it has lots of problems because it reflects our social biases and prejudice. Okay, when a policeman goes out to a village to look at a suicide, you know, if it's an Adivasi or a Dalit farmer or who doesn't have a patta, he won't record him as a farmer, just as a suicide. If it's a woman, nine times out of ten, they will record it as a woman's suicide, not as a farmer's suicide because socially we are, we find it very difficult to accept women as farmers. And that there's actually been a large scale feminization of Indian agriculture where women have been playing an increasingly greater role in farming. Increasingly greater burden because where the migrations out of the profession by men, men, that means that women who were earlier doing livestock, diarying and anyway doing the bulk of work, you know, are now pushed more and more into crop agriculture as well, where they are facing new sets of problems. So you have women excluded very large time, but this was not done by the NCRB. That is the data coming from the police stations reflecting our social prejudices. So it was always the NCRB's figures which began in 1995 for farm data were always huge underestimates. But from 2011, as the farm suicides issue became a big political, you know, football or explosive, one state after the other started declaring zero suicides. In fact in 2014 12 states and 6 union territories came, there was zero suicides and in 2014 and 15 the NCRB numbers saw, according to you, they've manipulated the data. The word what you use is fiddles in methodology. My words were they're hiding corpses in other columns. Now what happens is this in the 2014 report they changed the methodology, which the NCRB had followed for 20 years in 19 years and in the 20th year they changed the methodology. So the 2014 report which comes out in 2014 data which comes out in 2015, they break farmers into different categories, farmers, agricultural laborers, tenant farmers. Now knowing fully well that 95% of tenancies in the country are unrecorded. So what's going to happen is that the policeman who is checking, he's going to record that guy as an agricultural laborer. So that year, the number of agricultural labor suicides was far higher than the number of farmer suicides because you've shifted a number of tenant farmers into that column. Then even then the figures were looking so bad, so they started burying corpses in other columns. Now in all these accounting columns, you have a final one called Others. And you see those numbers going up. They weren't going up, they were going through the roof. So Karnataka had a 60% fall in farm suicides that year and a 245% increase in suicides by others. The five major states that accounted for 70% of farmer suicides. These are? At that time Andhra Pradesh, Telangana were one. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, MP. These states accounted for more than two-thirds of the farmer suicides. In 1995 when the collection of data started on this, they accounted for 52%. Today they account for more than 70% of the farmer suicides. In those areas of high stress it's been exploding. Now these five states saw a fall of more than 50% in farmer suicides and an increase in the others column of 128%. So that is to substantiate your point that they're fudging. All right. Now what we are seeing in different parts of the country, including some of the states that we've talked about, farmers, farm workers have been protesting. We know farmers have been shot dead in Mansoor in Madhya Pradesh. We are seeing in other parts farmers protesting in different ways, including in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh. Their produce is being dumped on the streets. Milk is flowing on the streets. Tomatoes are flowing on the streets. Yet we see the government seems to be trying to add best, applying band-aid to problems which are very, very deep-seated. And we'll talk a little bit after that on two or three issues. Manrega is one of them. And this whole thing about the minimum support price in the Swaminathan Commission. Yes, please. But it's actually trying to apply a band-aid to a hole in the heart. That's what they're trying to do. The thing is also, please, I forgot to mention, but you did. By 2014, 12 states and six union territories were declaring zero suicides. And yet the numbers were showing not a decrease. Yeah. Bengal for five years, Chhattisgarh for five years. These were states that had annual averages of 800 in Bengal and annual averages of 1500 in Chhattisgarh. Suddenly they go to zero. Who can believe this? It's simply not physically possible. So that's one sort. Yes, farmers have been protesting increasingly. And for me, that is a very positive thing. What I looked at over 20 years of covering their crisis is serious, deep-rooted demoralization, which is a recipe for suicide, among other things. Okay. So in the last two, three years, you're seeing them stand up, fight, protest, come out onto the streets. They know they've been cheated. They've, you know, so yes, you saw the Mandasaur firing. You saw a lot of things. You see everywhere in the country that is unrest amongst the farmers. The thing is that they've now decided to move from, I mean, it seems to me that they've decided to move to active protest than passive demoralization. Okay. We're going to come to that in a little while from now. But you argue, and you're not the only person, people like John Dries and others have pointed out, how the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Program, which is one time, touted as if it's the world's largest social security program. Whether it be farmers, whether it be farm workers, whether it be fish of people, whether it be forest dwellers, whether it be artisans, whether it be workers in Anganwadi's, school teachers, employees in, you know, government out, all of them are at some point of time, they thought that this scheme would help them. But here you see the government systematically trying to, what should I say, not just undermine, but come and destroy it all together. That started, to be fair, that process started several years ago before Mr. Jaitley and the NDA as well. It had started even when Mr. Chidambaram started undermining the NRGS. So there was always, see the NRGS was something that I think the Manmohan government did reluctantly under pressure from their own leader and also under pressure from 64 left MPs in parliament. This was something that they did reluctantly. Maybe some of the top Congress leaders were very much for it. But I don't believe that Mr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Chidambaram loved that program. So you saw the undermining of the NRGS in various ways. And in Maharashtra, for instance, Mr. Salat Pawar saw to it that it couldn't take off. You had eight districts that were at one time reporting zero performance, zero. Now it's been well documented that even if the government claims that they're spending the maximum amount of money, this money is not released, they're huge backlog, six months, wages not being paid. And in the last four years, and the four and a half years, especially since the Narendra Modi government came to power, do you see this particular program having been further undermined and weakened? Incredibly much further undermined and weakened. The classic example for you is in the first year of the Modi government, they slash the NRGS funds of the best performing state in the country, Tripura. Tripura was not by their claim, but by the central government's own acknowledgement and the Rural Development Ministry's acknowledgement. Tripura was the best performing state in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. And in Tripura, the NRGA had gone much further than just stopping hunger. People were able to send their kids to a little extortion. It was having an impact on education of children. Unlike, say, in some parts of Andhra where it was really a business of keeping the agricultural labor alive, you cut 53% of Tripura's funds and double the allocation for Gujarat, where it's all going to be done by machines. It's all going to be done by, it's not going to be done by manual work. It's not going to be done that way. So there was, it wasn't an accident. It was clear policy that we will finish this program. Okay. However, this government, whenever it has been accused of not doing enough for agriculture, the agrarian sector, the rural sector, they've come back and said, no, no. Our programs will ensure that farmers' incomes would be doubled by 2022. And most recently, the government has talked about, quote unquote, the biggest ever hike in the minimum support price. And then they're talking about the Swaminathan Commission and the National Commission of Farmers and how they have sought to increase these farmers. Now, why, I mean, you have consistently argued that the Swaminathan Committee's reports, which have been, therefore, the last 12 years, sorry, 12 years I'll stand corrected, has not been implemented. I mean, why there, why this, and even this government is making a claim that it's implementing the Swaminathan Commission's reports, but it's not. Okay. Well, you're right, actually, 14 years, because the first of the Swaminathan Commission reports was submitted in December 2004. The last, as I remember rightly, 2006 October. So over 80, over 14 years, there has never been a discussion called on the reports as such for the entire parliament to debate. I think 14 years is plenty of time. Now, second thing is that about the government and its claims, this government and its claims of implementing and not implementing. Firstly, the Swaminathan Commission's report, which is more accurately described as the National Commission for Farmers report, there were other people in it, was about a lot more than just MSP. Correct. Okay. And there are more than just a calculation of cost of production plus 50% plus amortization, interest, depreciation, etc., etc., the various ways of calculating that number. That's exactly right. But I mean, you have giant ideas which are still to be even looked at, price stabilization, fund, the new credit systems, all these sort of things are there in the Swaminathan Extension program. Extension programs. But look at this government. 2014, it came to power on a promise of implementing the first of the Swaminathan Commission's main recommendations, which was a minimum support price equal to cost of production, COP2, plus 50%. Now, this was 2014. 2015, the government submitted an affidavit in the courts and an RTI reply, this cannot be done. The government that came to power on the promise said it cannot be done. It would lead to a distortion of the markets. So they were worried about the distortion of the poor market, not about the distortions of millions of human beings who are farmers. In 2016, Radha Mohan Singh, the current agriculture minister, claimed that no such promise had ever been made. In 2017, they said, what Swaminathan Madhya Pradesh has gone much further than much further than Swaminathan Commission. Look at how Shivraj Chawan is doing. And we saw how he was doing with the Mansur firing and the killing of five farmers. 2018, budget speech by Mr. Arun Jaitley. I draw your attention to paragraphs 13 and 14 of the budget speech. Jaitley acknowledges that such a promise was made, and then claims, not only did we make this promise, we have implemented it. In the cariff crop, it's already been implemented. The MSP of cost of production plus 50%. July, Mr. Modi and others say, we're going to implement the MSP of cost of production plus 50%. Now, they've made five different positions in as many in four years. Now, what does this MSP stuff about? People get confused about it. I get hundreds of emails asking me about it. There were various ways of calculating MSP, not just three. There was A1, A2, C1. But there are three that mattered, which people were using at one level or the other. One was A2, which is purely the input cost, the paid out costs of the farmer in a season. Two was A2 plus FL, which is the input cost plus imputed family labor cost. Third was what the Swaminathan Commission had actually asked for, which was cost of COP2, comprehensive cost of production, which would include rental value of land, debt, which the government is saying we can't give. Effectively, without not in so many words, which by the way, no enterprise in the world functions without calculating those. Can you name an enterprise, any business enterprise that functions without taking these calculations into account? Now to give you what is the difference for a lay reader or lay viewer, the cheapest variety of wheat, when these announcements came, the cheapest variety of wheat, if you took it at A2 value, the cost of production was 500, which means MSP would be 750. A2 plus FL cost of production was 800. MSP would be 1250. But COP2 was 1200. The comprehensive cost of production of that cheapest variety of wheat was 1200 per quenter, which means your MSP would be 1800. Now between 750 and 1800, or even 1200 and 1800, it's a huge sum of money. And that was the cheating that they were doing. Most of the products were under A2. A few had A2 plus FL. Alright. So you have been actively engaged in trying to mobilize support from various sections. And I understand over 200 organizations have come together to have this march to the national capital in late November. In March of 2018, a lot of people were taken aback when 40,000 farmers, forest dwellers, adivasis, the underprivileged section, walked for seven days from Nashik to Mumbai in the peak of summer and came to Mumbai. Now you think, I mean, yes, we'll talk about how the media described them, but you want to now have an even bigger march of people in Delhi. But enjoy. There's a very big misunderstanding here. This is not my march. No, I know it's not yours. It's not my march. I am trying to see how middle class professionals like you and I can make ourselves relevant to and worthy of the call of 201 farmers organizations that made a call for a march on July 14th this year, a couple of weeks before that, the largest body, the All India Kisan Sabha had made a call. But the 201 farmers organizations, banded under the All India Kisan Sangars Samithi Coordination Committee made this call. And I felt that we have to respond to the AIKSCC call for a big march. It is the call of the Sangars Samithi Coordination Committee, the Kisan Sangars Coordination Committee, their call to which people like us feel that we should respond. The idea of it and the credit of it actually goes to them and also goes to the 40,000 farmers you mentioned who showed us that the world was somewhat different today than what we had come to believe it was. And they walked at night so that the children who would have to appear for their school examinations would not be disturbed. And you saw even in the city like Mumbai, where large sections of the middle class came out in support, gave them food, gave them water, etc, etc. But it was a spectacular thing. But where from there, where are we? The question is, Fadnav is the chief minister of Maharashtra said, yes, yes, we will look into their demands and they were sought to sort of diffuse the entire. Of course, we will try doing that. That's why we have a larger march at the national level, because so many of the issues concern the center. Now, but here, but I have to tell you this, when you say what did it achieve, I think it achieved something fantastic. Remember, when that march began, the AIKS march began from Nashik to Mumbai. I believe in Nashik, they were about 12,000. They reached Mumbai, they've got 50,000 in that in the in the Azad Maida. People joined them all along the way in Nashik and Tane. When they're coming up the Kasara Ghat, it's a spectacular site of 40,000 people winding up a mountain. Okay. And what did they do? First, they showed us that it can be done. These are people who don't, who are so poor, they don't own footwear. They came with their feet cut and bleeding and the old women and many of them prevent, staunch the bleeding of their feet by cellotaping their feet. They were too poor to afford chappals. So they put cello tape. Activists of the Kisan Sabha gave them rolls of cello tape and they put those around their feet and marched in 38 degrees overhead heat, two degrees plus coming from the highway and they came to Mumbai. In Mumbai, they were exhausted, but they decided, as you said, to march at night and in silence without raising slogans, they didn't want to disturb the lax of children who would appear for their board exams. And I think that triggered a wave of gratitude and respect in the middle classes of Mumbai who came out, people came and gave a thousand pairs of free chappals. People came out with food packets, with water packets. I have not seen that in 35 years. Now, let's try and see what's going to happen. But one moment, one moment. The thing is, when it started, the cabinet ministers of the Fadhanavi government said, we will not talk to these people. Who are they? They're not farmers. They're urban mousers. When they arrived with 50,000 people, they came in on 90% of their demands in four hours. Okay. The fact is that these guys showed us that sometimes you've just got to go yourself and get it done. That's what they showed us. Third, they showed us that they could reach out to sections like the middle classes, to the students. These are the things they showed us. I think the achievement was... So you're hopeful that this march that is being planned for the last few days of November would be able to scale up. There would be more people. I understand the government of Delhi has given you support. But are you prepared for how the government is going to be sort of... Government of Delhi has given the march support. Right, wait. What the central government or the union government would do? Your plans of surrounding parliament, there'll be section 144 there. Your plans of saying we'll have a special session of parliament to discuss the farmers issue. The government is not possibly not going to give a damn or to say we do do it. No, but once again we've had protests by farmers in Delhi. We've had farmers from Tamil Nadu displaying skulls in Jantar Mantar. Tell me this so-called occupied Delhi march. I'm being cynical. You are. I am. To ask you how you think, what impact it could possibly have. I think you were yourself present at a meeting where a network of middle class professionals on a Sunday 3550... On a holiday. On a holiday. On a holiday, 3550 people were contacted, 200 people showed up. Yeah, really enthusiastic and many of some of them included veteran activists who have been part of many marches who know what's possible and what's not possible. That's one thing. Including people like Mr. Damle who was moving force behind the Maharashtra. Damle. Sorry, yes. So he was the moving one of the big organizers of the Nashik to move by march. There too, I was not an organizer. People's archive of rural India played a role in that we were from the first hour putting out information about the march which the Marathi president picked up from us in a very big way. But the farmers scored the victory by getting a video of themselves coming up the Khasaragat and sending it out on WhatsApp and that went viral and it went berserk on Marathi television. And the same media that had virtually ignored the march was forced. I was getting 90 calls a day from media people asking. There were guys asking me, can you sum up in a few sound bites the complex issues of two decades. But they made the deaf here. They made the blind see. Don't underestimate these people. About the Modi government and it's of course I'm very sure they might try it but on the other hand they may not because one of the things is we're asking all members of parliament. The marchers are asking all members of parliament who agree with their demands and there are many to come and join them in the march today. So they should be escorted by members of parliament to parliament. Second, this is the most democratic protest. What are people saying? They're saying we want our parliament to function. The represented are telling the representatives we want you to function. We want you to come and join this march. We want you to escort us to parliament. We want to sit there. Third, you're asking for a special session of parliament again. A democratic demand. Third, fourth, you're saying it's on that focus of that session should be on the agrarian crisis and related issues. Issues beyond MSP. Now one of the things is government will accept MSP. They will say 5000 rupees per quintal tomorrow. They will never implement it because they will not procure. If there's no procurement system outside of Punjab there hardly exists one anymore. If there's no procurement I can offer you 10,000 rupees. The second thing they do is they will open the procurement centers 10 days late. In which case you as a farmer on this occasion the MSP announcement took place well after sewing had begun. It should have been announced one month earlier. The government really wanted to have an impact. And then they'll open the procurement centers 10 days late and they'll close them five days early. So both ends of the house, both ends of the arrivals, farmers are forced to sell off at lower rates. So all these problems you do expect. You know when you undertake any activity of protest you do expect. But the farmers and laborers in this march are making their protest within the highest standards of democratic behavior. One. Two. Coming to your point about the Delhi government in fact the chief minister Arvind Kejriwal personally said. I mean he made the he said I will visit I will receive the farmers at the borders of Delhi. And he said the Delhi government will help with arrangements of food, water and toilets. So you also do have a government here the host government in the capital city of Delhi. His attitude was entirely refreshing. Even if this government has been hamstrung or constrained badly because of the Uttar government. Yes but the attitude was totally refreshing in saying that they're coming to their capital city. All right. There are you know we will receive them. We will. My last question to you before I conclude this part of my interview with you. What would be the political impact? What could be the political impact? Did the march of the 40,000 farmers or the 50,000 farmers in Maharashtra could it have an impact on politics? Why do I ask this question? After 2014 the congress became weaker than it's ever been before. The left became weaker than it's ever been before. And you mentioned Tripura earlier with a good track record in implementing the Mandrega. The government is gone. The left is in power only in Canada. So the left movement has been weakened considerably. So I'm asking you what impact, what kind of political impact do you foresee? The first thing that we see and the lesson again was a lesson taught to us by the farmers of the Nashik Mumbai march was the totally, by us, unforeseen impact on the consciousness of the urban middle classes. The impact on the last in May, in May I spent, to April May I spent three weeks in Punjab. I was then in Andhra Pradesh. All these come after the Nashik march, my tours. In far out places in Sankuru and Batinda farmers had heard of the Nashik Mumbai march, were very proud that their counterparts could do it. And these are supposed to be, quote unquote, wealthy farmers. This is supposed to be the agriculturally most prosperous part of India. And they were saying, we should do this tomorrow. We should go to Delhi. By the way, the farmers who came from Nashik to Mumbai, they were the poorest of the farmers. They don't own footwear. Okay. So what I'm saying, it caught the imagination. It caught the imagination of the farmer. Now the protest with skulls at Jantar Mantar, that was really, for me, it was so sad because it was a tactic aimed at the media which would otherwise not pay you attention. Right. So that was the problem. But, but everywhere I went, two things she had had caught the attention in Chattisgarh, in Sangroor, in Bhatinda, in Ludhiana, in Kakinada, in Mahabubnagar, in Telangana. People knew two things. Swaminathan report that has caught the imagination that, you know, that this is the big one that you have to get. Swaminathan report and tell us about the Nashik march. All right. We will wait and watch and see what happens. You mentioned the media. Let's talk a little bit about the media, but we conclude this part of our discussion. Thank you very much for giving us your time. This is the first part, the conclusion of the first part of the interview with Sainath, which examined the dimensions of the agrarian crisis in the country. Keep watching Newsclick and keep watching this YouTube channel for the next installment of this interview with Sainath. When we examine and we look at the current state of the media in India. Thank you for being with us.