I would like to recall my high school days and remember some lines of Julius Caesar “The Ides of March”. Yes this is something I concur would justify the march of 2020 to us as Indians. Corona knocked to the doors of most of our cities and stakeholders of our human society.
Across cities we saw atrocities of this virus in different forms, be like migrant crisis, job losses, economic crash etc. But still there was one vertical of this country which held strong like Angad’s foot and added positivity to this notorious aura. Yes, many of you are guessing it right and it is “Agriculture”. Farmers added more grains than last year and started looking forward for their next crop sowing. With some measures of increasing MSP yesterday and some loan payment extension nothing concrete yet came from the government to increase the farmers income by double.
Having said that I would like to take the focus on MGNREGA which all the governments are boasting and thus amplifying the employment opportunities they have generated through this programme. Today most of the expenditure done on this line is on Ponds, roads, canals, drainage etc in the villages. With some positive results coming up there is no concrete evidence of village model which could be shown as an example to entire nation that see how MGNREGA has changed the look of the village. I am talking about more than 12 years of this program running and yet no bright discoveries.
Now let us consider one village as one society wherein all being connected to each other and aiming for common goal- “Prosperity for all”. But how to achieve it, is something which is fueled by lot of initiatives but failed. So something as a farmer I could put in my words to solve this. Now let us accept one fact that not all farmers are owners of land. And not only the land owners are farmers. What if something could be done professionally (like HR in companies) to connect these sections of farmers.
So here I am going to put something on the model connecting to sections of farmers through MGNREGA via Professional entity. This professional entity could be the Block development officer at block level. Today suppose one farmers cultivate 1 acre of land and sow paddy . He will finally cultivate approximately 14 to 15 quintals of rice. Now growing paddy requires log of labours from sowing, transplantation, grass removals,cutting, threshing etc. So this farmer end up paying 4to 6 quintals as labour cost to people (farmers without land) whi did this for him.With water, electricity,manure and other cost it goes up to the cost of 3500 to 4000. Now MSP of rice is approximately 1850 INR. So this farmer keep 2 to 3 quintals for his family to eat. 6 plus 3 I.e total 9 quintals gone out of 15. He sells remaining 6 quintals at 1850 per quintals and generate income of 11,100 INR. Now minus the cost 4000 as mentioned above. Finally he is left with 7100 INR. This is the amount we in cities spend of 2 bottles of Teachers Whiskey and enjoy our evenings. But for him as a farmer it is an income to survive for next 6 months. Now you would have imagined the pain. And trust me majority of the farmers now owns land less than 2 to 3 acres on an average.
Here comes the Model mentioned below:
Now I will take you all through some imagination. Suppose if the non land owner farmers register themselves for MGNREGA at their block. All the land owners also register themselves as employers. Now every season Employers could reach to block and demand for MGNREGA holders as part timers to work on their land on hourly basis.Now the non land owners work on farm land and register his working hours at block . Employer also confirms the hour.
Now the payment for their work is done through MGNREGA. Now please go back to my previous paragraphs to recall that around 6 quintals are given by the land owner as cost to non land owners. But now because of this policy there is good utilisation of people through MGNREGA for farming and parallelly for infrastructure works as used to happen before. Now the 6 quintals left with farmer extra could fetch him another 1850*6 i.e., 11,100 INR. Thus now final income with farmer is 7100 as mentioned before and this 11,100 making it 18,200 INR which is more than the double of 7100 (The previous income).
Now many of you can think that by this non land owners will lose the grains which they were getting before as per their income for labour. But government of India is already providing rations to these people every month through PDS system. So instead of ration now they will get cash through MGNREGA for working on the farmland. Similary Farmers can hire these people for dairy ,fishing etc. Now this farmer who is benefiting from the government and earning more than before could deposit some of his profit for the development of the village. May be 2000 out of 18200. This could create lot of money every year at village level and could be used to develop parks, library,Cyber Cafe etc with some additional fund from Gram Panchayat fund.
So this becomes an unending ecosystem of happy farmers, labourers and bright future of the kids and thus bright future of the country. Now I am reminding all of you that more than 70% population of this country resides in villages and we are going to touch almost 90 cr population. Please give a thought to this and think how this can reach your MLA or MP and this could be discussed in legislative assemblies or Parliament respectively.
Thought of a proud Gaon wala 🙂
