Farm debt rising, yield stagnant: SC panel suggests examining MSP, other measures

A Supreme Court-appointed panel on farmers’ grievances and protests has filed its interim report, listing reasons behind agrarian distress, including stagnant yield, rising costs and debt and inadequate marketing system.

The committee, constituted on September 2 under former Punjab and Haryana High Court Judge Nawab Singh to resolve grievances of farmers agitating at the Shambhu border, also suggested solutions, including examining the possibility of giving legal sanctity to minimum support price (MSP) and offering direct income support.

A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan on Friday took the interim report on record and praised the committee for its efforts and framing of issues to be examined.

In its 11-page interim report, the panel said, “The farming community in the country in general and that of Punjab and Haryana, in particular, has been facing an ever-increasing crisis for the past over two decades.” The stagnation in yield and production growth since the mid-1990s marked the beginning of the crisis, said the report.

“In 2022-23, the institutional debt on farmers in Punjab was Rs 73,673 crore, while in Haryana it was Rs 76,630 crore as per the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). There is also a significant burden of non-institutional debt on farmers, which is estimated to be 21.3 per cent of total outstanding debt on farmers in Punjab and 32 per cent in Haryana, according to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO),” the panel flagged.

The committee also comprised retired IPS officer BS Sandhu, Mohali resident Devinder Sharma, Professor Ranjit Singh Ghuman and Punjab Agricultural University’s economist Dr Sukhpal Singh.

Small and marginal farmers along with farm workers were the most affected, the panel said. “As a matter of fact, rural society as a whole is under severe economic stress. At the national level, 46 per cent of the total workers are absorbed in agriculture whose share in income is only 15 per cent,” it said. The management of crop residue was also a serious challenge, it said.

The panel said the farming community across the country was also struggling with a suicide epidemic. “In India, over 4 lakh farmers and farm workers have committed suicides since 1995. In Punjab, a house-to-house survey conducted by three public sector universities recorded 16,606 suicides among farmers and farm workers in 15 years (2000 to 2015),” it said.

The panel formulated 11 issues for the consideration of the apex court. These include measures to revitalise agriculture, examining the systemic and fundamental reasons for increasing indebtedness, farmers’ distress and causes behind growing unrest among the farmers and rural society. The panel said there was a need to examine “profitability of the farm sector through a mechanism of assuring remunerative prices, including MSP, direct income support and other viable approaches.”

11 issues formulated

The panel formulated 11 issues for the consideration of the apex court. These include measures to revitalise agriculture, examining the systemic and fundamental reasons for increasing indebtedness, farmers' distress and causes behind growing unrest among the farmers and rural society