Budget 2024-25 presented by FM 'insults, ignores' farmers, prioritises corporates

By Kiran Vissa, Kavitha Kuruganti*

Calling out the continuously-lowered budgetary allocations for agriculture sector in the country by the Union government, and terming it as clearly anti-farmer, the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) network stated that the government has not obviously reformed its ways from the drubbing it received from rural voters in the recent general elections.

It also said that the lessons that the government ought to have picked up from the historic farmers’ movement and the commitments made to Samyukt Kisan Morcha are also being ignored.

The presentation of budget numbers clubbed for multiple years in each budget is also obfuscating the real picture of progress or lack of it. “We do not see any concrete measures that reflect the government’s intent to make agriculture economically viable, environmentally sustainable and socially equitable. The budget allocation as a proportion of the total budget actually declined, as has been the trend over several years now”, said ASHA in its statement.

While farmers across the country have been asking for a legally-guaranteed price support, with cost component C2 taken as the base for at least 50% more over and above it guaranteed as MSP both in announcement and accrual to the farmer, nothing has been provided for this by the Government. In fact, only 6437 crore rupees have been provided for PM AASHA, market intervention and price support scheme, which is completely inadequate to support farmers who are in dire distress around the country.

What is striking about the budgets for agriculture in the BJP/NDA governments over the past several years are the hyped-up statements and announcements on the one hand and the declining financial provisions for particular schemes and for farmers in the country on the other hand.

For instance, under the Natural Farming Scheme, in 2023-24 BE, the allocation for the National Mission on Natural Farming was Rs 459 crore. Revised Expenditure is Rs 100 cr only. In 2024-25, it has been made into Rs 365 crore.

However, there is nothing to show what happened to the 2023-24 budget speech commitment saying that over the next 3 years, one crore farmers will adopt natural farming. Now, in this speech, the same commitment of one crore farmers being initiated into natural farming in the next two years is being made!

Several years ago, a revival of 22000 rural haats was promised with much fanfare with a new Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement (GRAAM) scheme, but no implementation took place. In this budget, a new scheme has been announced, talking about urban haats!

For 10,000 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) in the country, in 2021-22, the budgetary allocation was Rs 700 crore. In this year, it has been brought down to Rs 581.67 crore, with no information on how many have been formed, how many are viable, and how much benefit did member farmers actually get.

Budgetary allocation for agriculture and allied sectors further declines to only 3.15% of the total budget

The fate of PM-KISAN is also well known now -- compared to the first announcement in 2019 made in haste during an election season for 14 crore farm households, the budgetary allocations have come down to 60000 crores, while actual expenditure is lower in each year.

At Rs 86,000 crore, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) for rural workers also reflects significantly reduced allocations compared to previous years.

Interest subvention scheme for agricultural credit has a reduced allocation compared to last year, with actual expenditure repeatedly being lower than the budget provided for. On the other hand, farmers’ suicides continue unabated in many states of the country, with indebtedness being the most proximal cause.

Meanwhile, 'Namo Drone Didi' scheme which is expected to lead to spraying of pesticides/nano-fertilizers, and thereby increased agrochemical usage in more unsafe ways, has been given a budget of Rs 500 crore.

The picture with regard to implementation is being kept invisible. Implementation Budget 2023-24 is missing from the documents online on the Budget portal. It is not clear if this is on purpose to hide how much the Government fell short of its targets last year.

Even as the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is signing a spree of MoUs with big corporations for work that it has been mandated to do, the Budget speech threw more questions on the raison d’etre of ICAR by announcing budgetary support to the private sector too! ASHA said that the talk about climate-resilient varieties will inevitably lead to genetic modification technologies including genome edited varieties.

Even the land reforms measures that have been mentioned without any details can be clearly assumed to be land reforms that benefit the rich and the corporates in the country, not the land reforms that peasants have been struggling for.

The Digital Infrastructure scheme announced for agriculture is very likely to keep out real farmers and the long-pending issues with regard to giving identity and recognition to real farmers in the country have however been left unaddressed so far, whether it is of women farmers or adivasi farmers or tenant farmers and others like livestock farmers.

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*Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj)

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