Too much of a good thing: irrigation in central Punjab.
India |
The
Green Revolution might have enriched Punjab, but it is sounding a deathknell for
small farmers driven to bankruptcy by debts and barren land
As the sun sets on the
sepia-coloured horizon, Ram Pal sits alone to tell his story. “Let the land open
wide and swallow us up. My nine acres have become unproductive due to water logging.
The fields are full of wild grass. I have a family of three to feed and a debt of
$1,100 to repay,” laments the 60-year-old farmer from Kalalwala village in Punjab’s
Bhatinda district. Now Ram Pal goes to the nearby town every day to work as a labourer.
Like many farmers, he has been caught in the vortex of Punjab’s agricultural crisis.
Today, many farmers living in one of India’s richest granaries are in danger of losing
their livelihood as agricultural lands are slowly turning barren due to farming practices
aimed at increasing yields to meet demand.
Forty years ago, the state embarked on an agrarian revolution, popularly known as
the Green Revolution (GR), designed to improve harvests. It was born out of a dire
necessity to provide food security for the country and reduce dependence on imports
from the West, which reached 10 million tonnes in 1967. As a result of the GR, agricultural
productivity in Punjab grew by around six percent annually for the next two decades.
By the mid-1980s, wheat and rice yields had trebled.
Rising
costs as farmers step up reliance on chemical fertilizers
Undoubtedly,
the GR made Punjab—where 70 percent of the labour force works in agriculture and
related activities—one of the richest states in India. Yearly per capita income (at
current prices) rose from $60 in 1980-81 to $440 in 1997-98, well above the national
$240 average.
But there is a flip side to this prosperity. Always seeking to boost production,
farmers made excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, altered crop patterns
and overexploited groundwater resources.
Warning bells were sounded early on by M.S. Swaminathan (see p. 36), the eminent
scientist who masterminded the GR. “Irrigation without arrangements for drainage
could result in soils getting alkaline or saline. Indiscriminate use of pesticides
and herbicides could cause adverse changes in the biological balance,” he warned
the Indian Science Congress in 1968.
But the warning was not heeded. The soils have been ravaged, central districts have
depleted water tables while others are waterlogged because of poor drainage systems
and heavy monsoons. Though there have been no official reports indicating mass rural
exodus or decline in overall food yield in the state, recent studies have revealed
that the growth rate in productivity has declined in most areas.
“The GR was a reductionist strategy, not a total strategy,” says Pramod Kumar, director
of the Punjabi-based Institute for Development and Communication. “It was more a
grain revolution than a green revolution. Its unsustainable policies have led to
the poverty of soil and the people. I call it the poverty of prosperity.”
According to an official report, dependence on chemical fertilizers, which increased
from 5,000 tonnes in 1960-61 to 1.3 million in 1998-99, has led to severe micronutrient
deficiency in the soil. Furthermore, in the absence of adequate organic matter, soil
organisms such as bacteria, fungi and earthworms have been reduced in number or lost
altogether, notes the study.
“Since the soil has lost its natural capacity to nourish the crops, we have to keep
on adding fertilizers. Naturally, the cost of production is going up,” says Jitender
Pal Singh, a farmer in Ropar district. The cost of producing one tonne of wheat rose
from $30 in 1984-85 to $80 in 1997-98, almost a three fold increase in 12 years.
Simultaneously, the shift from water-prudent crops like maize and pulses to wheat
and rice cultivation led to increased demand for groundwater. “Farmers sow paddy
[rice] in the summer month of May to meet a September 1 deadline set by the government
to procure paddy at a pre-fixed price. But during the summer, crops need excess water,
which upsets the water table,” says S.P. Mittal, principal scientist at the Central
Soil and Water Conservation Research Centre in Chandigarh, the Punjabi capital. Because
of over-extraction, the water table has declined by one to three metres in more than
75 percent of the state.
At the same time, poor drainage systems and the monsoons have led to waterlogging
in the fields. A 1999 report estimates that agricultural lands equivalent to a 2,350-square
kilometre area in Punjab have been affected. Once a field is waterlogged, farmers
have no other choice but to stop cultivation. Many are forced to migrate to nearby
towns for odd jobs or wait for government help until the land regains its fertility
several years later.
An estimated 1.5 million hectares of land already face various types of soil degradation.
If this trend continues, average yields per hectare are expected to decrease, while
reliance on fertilizers will continue to push up production costs. The situation
is a deathknell for small farmers, who own more than half of Punjab’s 1.2 million
farms.
Ecological devastation and socio-economic problems go hand in hand. Studies reveal
that a majority of farmers in Punjab take out short-term loans at high interest rates
to continue production. A 1999 Punjab University study found that indebtedness among
farmers has pushed up suicides fourfold in ten years, while the rate in the rest
of the country is declining.
As the state’s agricultural crisis worsens, solutions have been put forward. One
of the most urgent steps is to explore how certain regions could be desalinated,
says the noted scientist S.K. Sinha, of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research
(ICAR). He also advocates policies that would give farmers the incentive to shift
to organic farming, cultivate integrated soil healthcare systems involving the use
of green manure and reduce dependence on water-consuming crops. |
