🟦 IAS Mains 2017 — Essay 5
“Farming has lost the ability to be a source of subsistence for majority of farmers in India.”
Domain: Agriculture / Economy / Society
Tagline: When the Producer of Food Can No Longer Afford to Eat Securely
🟧 1. Fodder Seeds — Strategic Brainstorm Points 💡
Subsistence ≠ profit → means survival with dignity
Majority of Indian farmers:
- small & marginal (≈85%)
- rain-fed dependence
Rising costs:
- seeds, fertilisers, pesticides
- diesel, electricity
- labour
Stagnant / volatile output prices
Input-output mismatch
Farming → low & uncertain returns
Indebtedness as structural phenomenon
Crop failure → income collapse
Farming as compulsion, not choice
Migration as coping mechanism
🟦 2. Historical & Indian Agrarian Context 🇮🇳
Traditional Indian economy:
- agriculture as subsistence backbone
Green Revolution:
- productivity ↑
- regional & crop imbalance
Shift:
- food security achieved
- farmer security neglected
Farmer as Annadata vs lived distress
Post-liberalisation:
- exposure to global price volatility
Declining viability of small holdings
🟥 3. Economic Theory & Intellectual Seeds 🌍
Terms of Trade:
- consistently against agriculture
Lewis Model:
- surplus labour without exit
Risk without insurance = subsistence failure
Market failures:
- price transmission asymmetry
Output growth ≠ income growth
Agriculture bears risks other sectors don’t
🟩 4. Governance, Policy & GS Dimensions 🏛️
MSP:
- limited coverage
- procurement concentration
Crop insurance:
- coverage gaps
Irrigation deficit:
- majority rain-fed
Market issues:
- APMC barriers
- middlemen dominance
Post-harvest losses
Weak value addition
FPOs underutilised
Fragmented land holdings
🟪 5. Social Consequences & Human Angle 📌
Farmer suicides
Inter-generational exit from farming
Rural distress → urban pressure
Gender burden:
- women farmers without land rights
Mental health neglect
Erosion of dignity of farming
Food producer facing hunger paradox
🌳 ESSAY TREE — UPSC STRUCTURE MAP
I. Introduction
Paradox: Food surplus vs farmer subsistence failure.
II. Meaning of Subsistence in Farming
Survival, stability, dignity.
III. Structural Causes
Costs, land fragmentation, climate risk.
IV. Market & Price Failures
MSP limits, price volatility.
V. Policy & Institutional Gaps
Insurance, irrigation, markets.
VI. Social Impact
Debt, migration, suicides.
VII. Regional & Crop Variations
Irrigated vs rain-fed India.
VIII. Recent Reforms & Limits
Assessment of current measures.
IX. Way Forward
Income-centric agriculture.
X. Conclusion
Restoring viability, dignity, and choice.
🟦 IAS MAINS 2017 — ESSAY–5
“Farming has lost the ability to be a source of subsistence for the majority of farmers in India.”
Introduction
A disturbing paradox defines Indian agriculture today. The country has achieved foodgrain self-sufficiency and has emerged as a major agricultural producer globally, yet a large section of its farmers struggle to sustain basic livelihoods. Farming, which once guaranteed subsistence and dignity to cultivators, has increasingly become an activity marked by uncertainty, indebtedness, and distress. The assertion that farming has lost its ability to be a source of subsistence for the majority of farmers reflects this deep structural crisis rather than a temporary downturn.
Understanding Subsistence in the Agricultural Context
Subsistence does not imply prosperity; it implies survival with stability and dignity. For farmers, subsistence means the ability to meet basic household needs—food, health, education, and shelter—through agricultural income. When farming fails to even ensure this minimum threshold, it ceases to function as a viable livelihood.
For the majority of Indian farmers, especially small and marginal cultivators, agriculture no longer meets this subsistence criterion.
Structural Factors Undermining Subsistence
The foremost challenge lies in the structure of Indian agriculture. Over 85 percent of farmers operate on small or marginal holdings, making economies of scale impossible. Fragmentation of land through inheritance has further reduced productive efficiency.
Rising input costs—seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, diesel, electricity, and labour—have far outpaced growth in output prices. Climate variability, monsoon dependence, and frequent extreme weather events compound risks. A single crop failure can wipe out annual income, pushing families into long-term debt.
Agriculture thus remains a high-risk activity with low and uncertain returns.
Market and Price Failures
Indian farmers face a distorted market ecosystem. While inputs are often sold at near-market or global prices, outputs are sold in fragmented local markets characterised by limited bargaining power. Price volatility, lack of assured buyers, and weak price realisation are persistent issues.
Minimum Support Price (MSP) mechanisms benefit a limited set of crops, regions, and farmers. The majority—especially those engaged in rain-fed agriculture—remain outside effective procurement systems. As a result, productivity gains do not translate into income security.
The outcome is an income paradox: farmers grow more but earn less.
Policy and Institutional Gaps
Despite policy attention, institutional support remains inadequate. Crop insurance schemes often suffer from delayed payouts and limited coverage. Irrigation infrastructure reaches only a fraction of cultivable land, leaving most farmers vulnerable to rainfall uncertainty.
Post-harvest losses due to inadequate storage, logistics, and processing facilities further erode earnings. Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), though promising, have yet to scale sufficiently to counter market power asymmetries.
Policies have historically focused on food security rather than farmer security.
Social Consequences of Agrarian Distress
The erosion of subsistence farming has severe social consequences. Indebtedness becomes chronic, leading in extreme cases to farmer suicides. Rural youth increasingly view agriculture as a last resort rather than a viable career, accelerating migration to already stressed urban centres.
Women farmers face additional disadvantages due to lack of land rights and recognition despite bearing substantial agricultural responsibility. Mental health issues, social fragmentation, and loss of dignity increasingly characterise agrarian regions.
The producer of food, paradoxically, becomes economically insecure.
Regional and Crop Variations
The crisis is uneven. Irrigated regions and farmers cultivating MSP-backed crops fare relatively better, while rain-fed areas cultivating coarse cereals, pulses, and oilseeds experience deeper vulnerability. This regional imbalance reinforces income inequality within agriculture itself.
Thus, subsistence failure is both widespread and differentiated.
Recent Reforms and Their Limits
Recent policy initiatives—income support schemes, market reforms, emphasis on doubling farmers’ income—indicate recognition of the problem. However, fragmented implementation, fiscal constraints, and resistance to change limit their transformative impact.
Incremental measures cannot substitute structural reform.
Way Forward: Restoring Subsistence and Dignity
Rebuilding agriculture as a subsistence-secure livelihood requires a shift from output-centric to income-centric policy. Key priorities include:
- Diversification toward high-value crops and allied activities
- Expansion of irrigation and climate-resilient practices
- Strengthening price assurance and market access
- Scaling FPOs and value-addition chains
- Reducing input dependency and ecological stress
Farming must become a choice sustained by security, not a compulsion born of lack of alternatives.
Conclusion
Indian agriculture feeds the nation but fails to feed many of its farmers securely. The loss of subsistence capacity is rooted in structural, market, and institutional failures rather than farmer inefficiency. Addressing this crisis is not merely an economic necessity but a moral imperative.
Restoring farming as a viable source of subsistence is essential to rural stability, food security, and the dignity of those who nourish the nation.
🟨SPIN-OFF ESSAY
When Cultivation No Longer Sustains the Cultivator: India’s Agrarian Paradox
Indian agriculture stands at a painful crossroads. On one hand, it has delivered food self-sufficiency to a vast nation; on the other, it has failed to guarantee even subsistence to a majority of those who cultivate the land. The statement that farming has lost the ability to be a source of subsistence for the majority of farmers in India captures not a momentary distress, but a prolonged structural erosion of livelihood security—where farming persists, yet survival becomes uncertain.
Subsistence: More Than Bare Survival
Subsistence in agriculture refers to dependable self-support—stable income, food security, resilience against shocks, and dignity of life. For generations, Indian farming fulfilled this role, even without high productivity or modern inputs. Today, however, subsistence itself is fragile. Farmers work harder and produce more, yet remain exposed to volatile prices, rising costs, and climatic uncertainty.
A livelihood that cannot guarantee basic stability ceases to be subsistence, regardless of national output figures.
Structural Fragility at the Core
The economic foundation of Indian agriculture is inherently weak. Small and marginal farmers—constituting over 85 percent of cultivators—operate on holdings too small to absorb shocks or generate surplus. Land fragmentation, inheritance laws, and population pressure have steadily reduced farm viability.
Simultaneously, agriculture has become input-intensive. Expenditure on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation, and energy has increased sharply, while output prices remain unpredictable. The risk-reward structure is deeply skewed—farmers bear risks that no other economic sector tolerates.
Climate Uncertainty and Risk Concentration
Climate change has magnified agrarian vulnerability. Rain-fed agriculture still dominates large parts of India, making farmers hostage to erratic monsoons. Droughts, floods, heatwaves, and pest outbreaks can obliterate an entire year’s income.
In the absence of reliable insurance and social security, a single climatic shock can convert temporary stress into long-term debt. Subsistence collapses not gradually, but abruptly.
Market Asymmetry and Price Injustice
Markets that should reward production often punish it. While farm inputs are procured at market-driven prices, farm outputs are sold in distorted local markets with weak bargaining power. Price volatility, delayed payments, and inadequate procurement mechanisms prevent fair income realisation.
Minimum Support Price regimes, though well-intentioned, benefit a narrow set of crops and regions. The majority of farmers operate outside assured price systems. Productivity gains, therefore, intensify effort without elevating income—a paradox that erodes subsistence from within.
Policy Focus on Food, Not the Farmer
India’s agricultural policy has historically prioritised national food security over farmer livelihood security. While consumers benefit from affordable food, farmers absorb the cost through suppressed prices and delayed reforms.
Institutional gaps persist in irrigation expansion, storage, logistics, credit access, and timely insurance payouts. Farmer Producer Organisations and value chains remain underdeveloped relative to scale. Welfare schemes offer relief, but relief cannot substitute viability.
Human and Social Consequences
When farming fails to sustain subsistence, the consequences ripple outward. Indebtedness becomes chronic, leading to social distress, mental health crises, and in tragic cases, suicides. Rural youth increasingly disengage from agriculture, triggering migration and demographic imbalances.
Women farmers, despite constituting a significant share of agricultural labour, remain under-recognised and under-protected, compounding vulnerability. The erosion of subsistence in farming is thus also an erosion of social dignity.
Uneven Crisis Across Regions
The agrarian crisis is not uniform. Irrigated regions and farmers cultivating MSP-supported crops fare relatively better, while rain-fed areas growing pulses, oilseeds, and coarse cereals face acute distress. This unevenness deepens inequality within agriculture itself, masking the scale of the problem under selective success stories.
Reclaiming Subsistence: A Structural Shift
Restoring farming as a subsistence livelihood demands a paradigm shift—from output-centric to income-centric agriculture. This includes:
- Diversifying crops and allied activities
- Expanding irrigation and climate-resilient practices
- Ensuring price assurance beyond limited procurement
- Strengthening FPOs and value addition
- Reducing input dependency through sustainable methods
Subsistence must be rebuilt through stability, not charity.
Conclusion
Farming in India survives, but subsistence within farming increasingly does not. This is not a failure of farmers, but of structures that demand productivity without protection, risk without security, and resilience without support.
Reviving farming as a sustainable livelihood is essential not only for rural stability and food security, but for the moral integrity of a society sustained by its cultivators. Until the producer of food can live securely from the act of producing it, India’s agrarian success will remain profoundly incomplete.