Pritam Singh
Professor Emeritus, Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford, UK
Any sectoral policy in a region of a country must address the specific needs of the region, but those needs can be effectively addressed by placing them in the context of national and global developments. Given the climate emergency, our planet is facing, with accelerating global heating, devastating bio-diversity loss and life-threatening levels of pollution, the agricultural policy of a region or a country must address this global challenge. Ignoring this challenge is not an option.
A second level of challenge a regional government has to face in evolving a policy is that a region, being a part of a national/federal structure, is not autonomous in framing a policy. Different federal systems impose different levels of limits on the regions. An acknowledgement of this structural limitation on regional autonomy is necessary though there is always a space for regions to struggle to extend the degree of autonomy they can exercise and make the federal limits flexible.
In shaping Punjab’s economy, including its agriculture, two external forces have played the most critical role, and a third external force has been recently defeated, at least temporarily.
The first force was the British annexation of Punjab in 1849. Before this annexation, Punjab’s economy was governed by its internal logic that was dictated by the economic, political, social, and military strategies of its Punjabi sovereign ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh. After its annexation and its integration into the larger Indian territory under British control, Punjab’s economy started being shaped by the external logic of British imperial rule. The imperial rulers initiated the Canal Colonies project, which involved the settlement of Punjabi farmers from East Punjab into West Punjab, where a canal irrigation network was being developed. The colonial administration had three interlocking aims behind this massive project: (i) to increase the agricultural output for the maximising of land revenue returns; (ii) to facilitate military recruitment from the peasantry by making military service an economically attractive route to land acquirement; and (iii) to create a loyal political base in the countryside for the British rule. This colonial strategy contributed crucially to making Punjab an agriculturally oriented economy. This was in sharp contrast with the strategies adopted in other provinces, such as the Bombay Presidency (the present Maharashtra and Gujarat), the Madras Presidency (the present Tamil Nadu) and the Calcutta Presidency (the present Bengal), which facilitated a certain degree of industrialisation of these regions.
The second external force was the politico-economic strategy called Green Revolution, adopted in the 1960s to meet the Centrally decided national objective of food self-sufficiency. This strategy increased rural incomes in the initial years but devastated the quality of life caused by the environmentally damaging impacts of this strategy.
The third external force which could have mutilated Punjab agriculture, rural economy, society and culture was the passing of the three farm laws by the Centre in 2020, which were eventually repealed in 2022. The creativity, energy and strength of the Punjabi farmers, helped by the farmers of other states in India, especially from Haryana, were historically remarkable in defeating the pro-agribusiness and anti-federal strategy behind these laws. However, the farmers’ movement failed not only in proposing a political alternative to the existing status quoist formations, but it failed also in proposing a radical agrarian programme to restructure agriculture.
Punjab agriculture stands now with two major challenges of global climate change and the external policy environment shaped by the Centre in India’s federal setup. The recent extreme weather event of untimely rains, hailstorms, and strong winds causing extensive damage to wheat and other rabi crops in Punjab and its neighbouring states is a clear reminder that global climate change is impacting agriculture, the farming community and the macro economy here and now. On the federal dimension, though agriculture is constitutionally a state subject, the Centre’s intrusion into agriculture has become overwhelming and debilitating for state governments to initiate and implement state-led policies. For Punjab, which is more dependent on agriculture than most other states, the increasing centralisation of agricultural management and policies is an even more daunting challenge in framing a Punjab-oriented agricultural policy.
One area where both climate change and increasing central control of agriculture Punjab need to address is rice cultivation in Punjab. Rice growing was introduced in Punjab through centrally-directed schemes to meet the centrally-decided objective of increasing total food output and availability. Rice cultivation is a major cause of global warming and environmental degradation in Punjab and, in turn, is highly susceptible to extreme events such as drought and flooding caused by global warming. A lesson needs to be learnt about the vulnerability of this crop to extreme weather events from the recent havoc created by devastating floods in Pakistan that led to a 15% reduction in rice production. Declining yield is a further sign of the crop’s unreliability in raising farm incomes. According to the UN data, the yield has increased only by 0.9% during the last decade in comparison with around 1.3% increase in the previous decade. According to one study, a 1°C increase in minimum temperature leads to a 10% decline in yield.
Paddy fields starve soils of oxygen and emit a lot of methane. Methane is a big contributor to greenhouse emissions that cause global warming. According to one calculation, paddy cultivation is a bigger source of greenhouse gas emissions than any other foodstuff except beef and that its emission footprint is similar to that of aviation.
Rice production in Punjab cannot be stopped in one go because the existing MSP mechanism controlled by the Centre ties farmers to this crop. A phased programme towards a drastic decline in area under crop would need mass education of the farming community about its environmental damage, especially soil and water pollution, its declining yield and its higher vulnerability to extreme weather events. This needs to be accompanied by state government incentivising farmers to grow other crops, especially millets, through proper marketing mechanisms.
A larger challenge is to question the economic orthodoxy that economic development demands abandoning agriculture to make a transition to industrialisation and the service sector. An ecologically informed future vision demands valuing small-scale family farming rather than large-scale mechanised capitalist farming, which emits more emissions than small-scale farming. The state has to actively intervene in facilitating cooperative arrangements between small family farms through cooperative finance. Landless farmers and labourers need to be encouraged and incentivised to grow labour-intensive vegetable crops in small parcels of land.
Planning for a medium-term shift to organic agriculture suited to the regional needs of Punjab is the fundamental answer to the sustainability of Punjab agriculture and the health of not only its farming population but also of the urban population.