Three months after the government announced higher minimum support prices (MSP), farmers are still feeling the heat as the harvest of kharif crops across India is on in full swing.

This is the third straight year of record kharif production and prices of at least nine crops are currently below the minimum support price. For some crops, the prices is about 6 percent below MSP. But for about five others crops, the selling price is more than 20 percent below the MSP.

CNBC-TV18 caught up with Siraj Hussain, former secretary and senior visiting fellow at ICRIER; Avik Saha, national convenor at Jai Kisan Andolan; Ajay Vir Jakhar, chairman of Bharat Krishak Samaj and Abhijit Sen, JNU professor, to find why farmers are not getting the price they should be getting for crops across mandis in the country.

Jakhar said, "The situation is no different than it was in the past many years and it's nothing new that is happening now. The problem has arisen as we continue to import pulses and oil seeds, even though production acreage has increased greatly in India in response to higher prices in the earlier years. There was an absolute mismatch between what the food ministry, commerce ministry and agriculture ministry was doing. It's a crisis of failure or coordinated governance at the centre."

"I think it's a very wrong strategy to buy at MSP and sell it to farmers. They key should have been to buy it at MSP and then export it even if it's at a loss as how do you transfer the loss. You are transferring the loss back to farmers with what you are doing. If the government is ready to pick up losses, then they should have exported the stock from the country. With what the government is doing now, farmers will never get a minimum support price," he said.

Saha said, "The problem is with implementation. This is a strong government, a majority government and does not have any coalition pressures. All the government needs to do is to get into the market, be the strong man in the market, which it legally is supposed to be any way and ensure that the transactions take place at its mandated price."

"Here is a lame duck government announcing prices, which nobody cares about and it does nothing about it. The government can actually get into the market and implement it. This should not become a government purchase scheme. The government should purchase and it's supposed to purchase just to keep the market at the correct price," he said.

Sen said, "The prices at the moment are roughly similar to the prices there have been over the years. The announcement, which upped the MSP massively has done nothing to the price on the ground. The government actually promised something to the farmers and has not been able to actually match it in terms of what the prices in the market are. Now, that is a problem of implementation and that is a problem all of us were expecting."

Hussain said, "What is happening on the ground is not at all unexpected. The expectations were raised to high. Saha has said government should be buying, but I have difference of opinion with him. It's not possible for any government in any state to buy all the commodities at MSP. So, what can be done now? We were expecting that Bhavantar Yojna will be implemented at least in Madhya Pradesh as it was done last year. But it seems that even in case of soybean where Rs 150 crore was reimbursed to soybean farmers last year under Bhavantar. But this year, it seems Madhya Pradesh is not implementing Bhavantar in the same manner as it did last year."

"Madhya Pradesh has capped the price deficiency payment at Rs 500 per quintal. So, it seems that the state government has realised that financially it's not possible even to implement Bhavantar. So now what is the road ahead? We had calculated that if the country gives Rs 5,000 per hectare to all the farmers crop on neutral basis, then the total expenditure will be something like Rs 99 lakh crore. So, that is perhaps the road ahead. Of course, it could be fine-tuned, but it's not possible to procure everything or to implement Bhavantar," he added.

First Published:Oct 22, 2018 7:57 PM IST