Agrarian Crisis
Introduction
India has been witnessing increasing protests from farmers across the country over the past few
years. Poignant images of farmers dumping vegetables on roads and clutching dead rats in their
mouths have long indicated their plight amid the looming agrarian crisis. Poor policies, low
agricultural prices and income, dependence on the weather, and low productivity due to
inadequate technology and lack of mechanization are some of the factors which constitute this
crisis that has driven farmers to commit suicides and to give up farming altogether. Statistics
elucidate the chronic distress of the farmers and paint a gloomy picture of the future of the
agrarian sector.
Static growth and low mechanization
The recent Economic Survey 2019-20 shows that the average annual growth rate in agriculture
has been stagnant over the past six years, with the growth of Gross Value Added (GVA) of
agriculture and its allied sectors seeing a fluctuating trend. From -0.2% in 2014-15 and 6.3% in
2016-17, it declined to 2.9% in 2018-19, and is estimated to be 2.8% in 2019-20. This latest
estimate is slightly below the average annual growth rate of 2.9 between 2014-15 and 2018-19.
Furthermore, the share of agriculture and allied sectors in the GVA of the nation fell from 18.2%
in 2014-15 to 16.1% in 2018-19. However, the government attributed the decline to better
performance by the non-agricultural sectors in the survey, which also underscored the
importance of agriculture mechanization for transforming Indian farming from subsistence to
commercial farming. At present, the overall farm mechanization in India is around 40%, while it
is 59.5% and 75% in China and Brazil respectively.1
Suicides
As per a report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), titled Accidental Deaths and
Suicides in India, 5,957 farmers and 4,354 labourers ended their lives in 2019, making a
combined total of 10,281 suicides from the agricultural sector and amounting to 7.4 percent of
the total number of suicides in India. Such high numbers were reported even as Uttarakhand,
1 Chap. 7, Agriculture and Food Management, Economic Survey 2019-20.
