The growing force of farmers’ movement across India received a fresh reinforcement of support by civic organisations by teachers, students, peace organisations, from various sections of society by November 30, 2020. Workers, doctors, lawyers, students, teachers, human rights leaders and Dalit organisations have all held demonstrations or published open letters detailing their support for the withdrawal of the three agriculture laws.

This support further steels the argument put forward by farmers across India that their demands do not hold any religious or political motive. The movement that began in Punjab has branched out to various parts of India all of whom denounced the Modi government for the enforcement of these anti-farmer-dubbed laws.

Founder and Nation Convener of the Safai Karamchari Andolan – a human rights organisation that works for the eradication of manual scavengers – Bezwada Wilson expressed his solidarity with farmers to SabrangIndia.

“Wherever I go, I am trying to assert my solidarity with Indian farmers and their cause. The present government is trying to criminalise them by introducing notions of Khalistani motives. These things are only being said to undermine the farmers’ movement since the Union government has no defence,” he said.

Since the beginning of the nationwide protest march, “godi-media” or the regime’s lapdogs in newsrooms have been trying to show the movement as one that is politically-motivated. However, the solidarity expressed by human rights organisations such as the United Against Hate (UAH) has rid the movement of any such rumours.

On November 29, activist and member of UAH Shariq Husain distributed food among farmers stopped at the Singhu border.

सिंघू बार्डर पहुँच गया हूँ यहां बताया जा रहा है 3 लाख किसान भाई जमा हैं! pic.twitter.com/VJkOmGsfYu

— Shariq husain (@Shariqhusain99) November 29, 2020

Following the permission to protest granted by the central government, the organisation has planned a similar initiative at the Nirankari grounds in Burari with the help of several nearby mosques. Members said they will provide three meals daily to farmers who are the annadaatas of the country.

Muslim organisations like the Masjid-e-Quba in Jalandhar, Punjab stood with farmers over the last week, just as Sikh farmers had stood alongside Muslim organisation during the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests by providing langar.

Similarly, Punjab Treasurer of Democratic Teachers Front Ashwani Awasthi told SabrangIndia that the grievances of the farmers extend to various sections of society.

“Many of the children that come to our school are farmers’ children. How can we not support the very people with whom we spend out working hours. Moreover, we are also farmers’ children. Most of our teachers come from farms so if any government does any wrong then we will raise our voices against the injustice,” he said.

Awasthi also mentioned that the government continued to demand fees from children while failing to provide proper prices for crops. Members of his organisation mobilised at the local level to talk to people regarding the merits and demerits of the new laws. He also dismissed the Khalistani allegations on Punjab farmers.

“Punjab farmers are not Khakistani. This is simply a scheme to break hindu-Sikh brotherhood,” he said.

Many teachers also marched with farmers towards Delhi while others started funds for farmers. Further, government school teachers are going village to village to mobilise youngsters.

Along with Punjab’s teachers, students’ union members from across the country also voiced their support at the local level.

Chennai District Secretary Chandru said that members of the Students Federation of India (SFI) held demonstrations in Salem, Chennai on November 29 to decry the anti-democratic move of the central government.

“We called for similar protests all over Tamil Nadu which will continue for the entirety of this week. We support the peasant movement and denounce the implementation of these laws that are not useful for common people and are clearly against farmers,” he said.

SFI National Convener Dipshita said many underprivileged members of the organisation belong to farmers’ families. For this reason, members understand the impact of these laws in the educational sphere as well.

“We have planned a march in Kolkata in coming days as well. For now, we are trying to provide medical help to farmers who have arrived in Delhi. Many SFI students also joined them in their march towards Delhi,” said Dipshita.

Yet another employees organisation Sarva Karamchari Sangh (SKS) in Haryana, expressed their solidarity by staging a march in support of the farmers on Sunday. They condemned the use of physical violence against farmers. Members also provided medical aid and food facilities for farmers at the city border.

SKS State General Secretary Satish Kumar Sethi appealed to the government to realise farmers’ demand.

“We also ask for a loan waiver and the enforcement of the Swami Commission report suggestions of a C-2 formula to help improve the state of farmers in the country,” he said.

Even women’s organisations wrote a joint open letter  to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that the government refrain from its brutal behaviour towards farmers.  In their letter, they highlighted the adverse impact of the three anti-farmer laws on rural women.

“Women, even though not recognised as farmers, are equally engaged in agricultural operations. A large number of women still remain as “invisible contributors”. The role of women in the agricultural sector cannot be ignored as they comprise 33% of the agriculture labour force and 48% of the self-employed farmers,” they said.

Recent reports have also talked of solidarity from NRI organisations in countries like Italy, Canada among others for the repeal of the three agriculture laws.

Related:

Women farmers worst hit by anti-farmer laws: National Women’s Organisations
Our farmers cannot be treated like criminals and terrorists: Citizens For Democracy
If Modi really cares about Nanak’s teachings, he must treat farmers with respect
Residents of Jamia Nagar and left organisations voice their solidarity with India’s farmers
Cop gets drenched in water, farmer slapped with attempt to murder case!

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Read full report here: https://newscentral24x7.com/narrative-has-to-change-from-hindu-musalman-to-kisan-naujawan-sitaram-yechury/

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Of the cereals grown in India, rice consumes the most water per tonne of output while delivering the least nutrients–iron, zinc and protein–according to the study published in Science Advances, a global science journal. The suggested replacements for rice are maize, finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum, all of which consume less water per tonne and are more nutritious.
 
In a first, scientists juxtaposed this potential water-saving from an alternative cropping pattern with the nutritional gains that would follow from growing more nutrient-dense and less water-intensive cereals. Replacing rice with a more nutrient-rich or water-efficient crop would marginally improve the production of protein (1%) but considerably increase the production of iron and zinc, by 27% and 13%, respectively.
 
These findings are significant considering that India today faces the worst water crisis in its history and continues to battle iron and zinc deficiencies.
 
The study, ‘Alternative cereals can improve water use and nutrient supply in India’, was published on July 4, 2018.
 
Twenty-one Indian cities will run out of groundwater by 2020, the NITI Aayog, the government’s policy think-tank, predicted last month, as IndiaSpend reported on June 25, 2018.
 
While the common belief is that urbanisation and industrialisation are the reasons for the falling groundwater levels across India, over nine-tenths of groundwater is extracted for irrigation, IndiaSpend reported in November 2016.
 
Roughly one-third (34%) of the 632 cubic kilometre (cu km) of water that India used to grow cereals in 2009 came from various irrigation sources, the new study said. Rainfall accounted for the rest.
 
While India is food secure today, the new study showed that this achievement has come at the cost of water security, and has failed to substantially improve Indians’ nutrition status, particularly iron and zinc sufficiency.
 
Just over half (53%) of Indian women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years) were estimated to be anaemic–a result of iron deficiency–in the fourth National Family Health Survey of 2015-16, IndiaSpend reported in November 2017. More than a third of the Indian population is zinc-deprived, we reported in September 2017.
 
Now it appears a solution is at hand to reverse these deficiencies while achieving water security and livelihood security for farmers. “A massive win-win” is how Mihir Shah, economist, former member of the Planning Commission and co-founder of water and livelihood security initiative Samaj Pragati Sahayog, described the cropping change solution.
 
Using less water for irrigation is key to environmental sustainability
India’s cereal production increased 230% between 1966 and 2009, according to this new study, whose credit goes to the vast improvements in irrigation infrastructure across India. Irrigation sources contributed 86% of the increase in water usage for cereal production during this period.
 
Rainwater used for agriculture on rainfed lands reduced from 300 cu km to 219 cu km. This fall expresses both the expansion of the irrigated area and the decline in average rainfall in recent decades, Ashwini Chhatre, co-author of the present study and associate professor of public policy and academic director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, told IndiaSpend.
 

Source: Science Advances; Figures in cu km.
 
Average rainfall declined from 1,050 mm in the kharif (monsoon) season of 1970 to less than 1,000 mm in kharif 2015. Similarly, in the winter cropping or rabi season, average rainfall declined from roughly 150 mm in 1970 to about 100 mm in 2015, IndiaSpend reported in June 2018 based on the findings of a new NITI Aayog study. The number of days without rainfall during the monsoons has increased, from 40% in 1970 to 45% in 2015.
 
“Protective irrigation is vital to insure farmers [growing] alternative cereals against dry days and dry spells during the monsoon, both of which are now established outcomes of climate change,” said Chhatre.
 
How foodgrain subsidy has added to water stress and nutritional deficiencies
 
Cereal consumption and cropping data show that the shift towards rice-wheat consumption and cropping has intensified since the Green Revolution of the 1960s.
 
Between the mid-1960s and 2010, an urban Indian’s wheat consumption almost doubled, from 27 kg to 52 kg. This plate-share gain came at the cost of the consumption of sorghum and millets, reducing their average annual per capita consumption from 32.9 kg to 4.2 kg.
 
As a result, since 1956, the area under millets and sorghum has shrunk–23% for pearl millet, 49% for finger millet, 64% for sorghum and 85% for small (or minor) millets.
 
This dietary shift is typically believed to have been demand-led, as wheat is seen as superior to millets and sorghum, and the cereal preferred by the more affluent Indians. This study, however, showed that the shift is significantly supply-driven, reflecting “a substantial influence from the country’s Public Distribution System”, the food security programme for low-income households.
 
By providing a guaranteed minimum support price to producers and placing heavy subsidies on rice and wheat at the consumer end, this system “has also served to influence cropping and dietary choices away from more nutrient-rich alternative cereals and is an important factor contributing to the persistence of widespread nutrient deficiencies”, the study noted.
 

Source: Indian Food Composition Tables, National Institute Of Nutrition, quoted in Science Advances.
 
“Chief minister N.T. Rama Rao’s promise of rice at Rs 2 per kg in 1982 in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh changed the dietary preferences of the last two generations, from millets to rice, without any commensurate improvement in health,” Chhatre added by way of more examples to show this supply-side push.
 
Partly as a result of this, anaemia in women of reproductive age–a key indicator of the health status of a society–has increased in Telangana (part of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh), from 49.8% in the first National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in 1999-2000 to 55% in the latest NFHS in 2015-16.
 
Shah advocated introducing healthier millets and pulses into the Mid-Day Meal scheme and Integrated Child Development Services scheme, to create sizeable demand for these crops and to create a structure of incentives for farmers to grow them. This could be followed by the decentralised procurement of the crops by the government for supply to these schemes.
 
“At present, we only incentivise the growing of water-intensive crops because those are the only crops we procure,” he said.
 
This study has also found that swapping rice for an alternative cereal would not entail a fall in production, which could have implied a shortage of food grain. For instance, switching from rice to maize in 38 rice-growing districts in Madhya Pradesh would actually increase the yield, as would happen in 22 rice-growing districts in Maharashtra. Swapping rice for sorghum in 31 rice-growing districts in Madhya Pradesh and in 14 districts in Maharashtra would produce a higher yield, it added.
 

Source: Science Advances
 
Decentralising nutrient production would protect from local climate shocks
 
Punjab, with 97% of its land irrigated, and Haryana, with 84%, vastly improved their irrigation facilities between 1966 and 2009, the period of this study. In becoming key producers of rice and wheat for the country, these states have also become the largest sources of agricultural water demand.
 
The irrigation needs of wheat–a rabi crop–have driven 69% of the increase in demand for water for agricultural purposes. Rice, meanwhile, is the most inefficient crop in nutrient production as well as water usage, in both the kharif and rabi seasons.
 
Consequently, replacing the rice grown in the northern grain belt alone with alternative crops would deliver substantial water saving, and “about half of total water savings from replacement would come from just 39 districts, most of which are in Punjab and Haryana”, Chhatre said.
 
The study has found that in the last 40 years, the burden of water stress has shifted away from southern districts, some of which have experienced a decrease in agricultural water demand, towards Punjab and Haryana.
 

Source: Science Advances
 
Changing the cropping pattern across India would effectively decentralise nutrient production, thereby reducing the impact of local climate shocks such as droughts or floods to national grain production, Kyle Frankel Davis, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at The Earth Institute, Columbia University, USA, as well as a NatureNet Science Fellow at The Nature Conservancy, told IndiaSpend.
 
“While India has done well to prioritise calorie production to avoid widespread hunger, now, considerations like nutrition and environmental impacts cannot continue to be side-stepped if the country wants to achieve better health for all and environmental sustainability,” he said.
 
(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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