 You're watching News Made Easy. I am Anand Dev Chakravarthy. The India's farmers called the Bharat Bandh this week and mainstream media more or less ignored it. They didn't cover any of the issues behind this Bharat Bandh. What do farmers really want? They want one key thing for the government to guarantee them assured minimum support prices at MSP. That is their biggest demand amongst many others. And today I'm going to give you five key reasons why farmers need assured prices. Why farmers need MSP? Let's start with reason number one and that is how poor India's farmers are. 87% of India's farmers own less than 2 hectares of land which produces very little, gives them very little income. So 87% of India's farmers, right, how much do they earn? They earn about 88,759 rupees per month as a household, a four to five member household. That's the earning per month. How much does that work out at 60 rupees? Just about 60 rupees per person per month if you belong to a farming family. And mind you, all of this does not come from farming or crop production. There are other sources of income as well. In fact, if we just look at crop production and compare two government surveys. One, the NAFIS done in 2017 and the other the NSS done in 2018-19. Then you'll see that income from crop production has actually dropped. It has dropped by 1.8% for these small marginal and small farmers. It has dropped. You can say okay, you can't compare two separate surveys, but it gives us a sense as to what has happened. What is worse is that when we adjust it for inflation, remember nominal or money income has gone down by 1.8%. Inflation in the same period in rural India was about 6.8%. That means real income went down by 8.6%. Now remember again, as I said, these are two different surveys. Maybe it's not 8.6%, maybe it's 5%. But generally we can get a sense that the trend is that real income from crop production has dropped. That is why farmers want assured prices. That is why they want MSP and MSP clearly helps farmers. And I'm going to show that by showing you the earnings, the average earning from crop production. That small and marginal farmers, those who own less than 2 hectares of land get in 4 key states. Let's start with Punjab. In Punjab, if I look at it, in Punjab from crop production, farmers earn approximately 4,140 rupees. Which is 62% more than the national average. In Haryana, it's 43% more than the national average. The numbers are on your screen. In UP, on the other hand, it's just about 2,400 rupees and 6% lower than the national average. In Bihar, it's even worse, just about 2,300 rupees, which is 10% lower than the national average. Why has this happened? Let's see, does MSP have anything to do with it? And look at the data here. I'm going to tell you how much of the crop is picked up at MSP in various these four states. In Punjab, for paddy, 30% picked up, over 30%. Wheat, almost 32%. In Haryana, for paddy, more than 21% picked up at MSP by the government. For wheat, nearly 33%. In UP, on the other hand, less than 8% of paddy production is picked up at MSP and just about 9% of wheat is picked up at MSP in Bihar. It's even lower, just about 5.5 odd percent, even less than that of paddy is bought from farmers at MSP. And just 3% of wheat is bought from farmers at MSP. That tells you why farmers in Punjab and Haryana earn more from crop production. Whereas those in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar do not earn enough. In fact, one point is very clear that what also happens is that MSP boosts wages as well. Because when farmers earn more, wage workers also demand higher wages and whoever is willing to pay more, they'll go and work there. And we can see that right here. If I look at wages in how much of the income, remember that a farming family earns a lot in wages as well. It's not just farm income. I told you right at the beginning. You can see that the average income of farming families that we saw, a significant part of it is actually wages. So let's look at what is happening in the same four states in Punjab. Wage income for small and marginal farmers is about 5100 rupees, which is 25% more than average. In Haryana, it's even better, close to 6700, which is 64% more than the national average. In UP, on the other hand, it is 33% lower than the national average, just about 2700 rupees. And in Bihar, it's even lower, 2400 odd rupees, which is 41% lower than the national average. Again, you can see that because there is not enough MSP being picked up, farmers are poor and they are paying lower wages to other wage workers. And that is why wage earnings are depressed in these places. Again, this is point number four. All right, point number five. Point number five is that farmers across India have turned into wage workers. They've turned into wage labor. Crop production is not enough to give them any income. Look at all India. 29% of the total income of small and marginal farmers across India comes from farming, just 29%. Whereas 47% actually comes from wage work, right? So they're more laborers than farmers. If you look at Punjab, 28% comes from farming, 34% comes from wage work, which showed you that in UP and Bihar wage, wage income is low. But despite that, in UP, 36% of income comes from farming or crop production and 40% from wage work. In Bihar, 34% comes from farming and 35% again, more from wage work. So across the sphere, you can see that farmers are turning into wage workers because there's not enough returns from crop production. That is why they need assured floor prices. They need procurement prices, assured guaranteed prices to improve their income. That is why they're demanding MSP. That is why they need it. That is why they call the Bharat Ban. Keep watching NewsClick. That's the show today. I'll be back next week.