Abstract
Majority of the Indian farmers are very small in terms of their land holding. Neither they are united nor educated. The heinous Indian caste system has divided these farmers into hundreds of castes and subcastes therefore they do not come together easily to conduct large size farming. As a result, they do not attain any economy of scale, which is essential for sustainable growth. Most of the small farmers follow unscientific rituals, which consume their resources, energy and time. Farmers do not pursue scientific research to improve their farming processes and programs. Most of them are unaware of the growth opportunities available from the participation in the global trade of agriculture produce. As they are financially illiterate, they do not really know the mechanism of costing and pricing of their produce. The Indian education system does not provide practical training related to agricultural processes and products. As a result, the children of farmers do not take enough interest in farming. On the other side, their traditional degrees are not found to be suitable for the manufacturing and service sectors. Hence, the young agrarian generation is stuck with useless competencies and are gradually becoming a burden for the economy.
Indian agriculture universities and research centers are not capable of guiding the small innocent farmers about weather & soil studies, selection of appropriate crops, application of fertilizers & pesticides, development of new seeds etc. Therefore, small farmers always get confused and do not really respond to the market profitably.
The distribution logistic needed for the agriculture produce is dominated by big merchants and government bureaucrats. Only a few politically connected big farmers have been exploiting the government's institutional support and subsidies. The small farmers are routinely harassed and exploited at most of the distribution centers. The Indian banking system does not support small farmers as it finds the recovery of loans a herculean task.
The government does not prepare a proactive and integrated plan, which should guide the farmers about domestic and export markets. Hence, most of the farmers do not understand the supply and demand mechanism of the market. This obviously results in over supply of their agriculture produce and under-cutting of prices in the market. Small farmers do not understand the government's economic policies and hence cannot have any long-term vision for their farm management. In India, agricultural insurance is in a pathetic condition. Farmers do not understand crop insurance well and therefore cannot use it to their advantage. As the Indian politicians and bureaucrats are not very keen about guarantying the financial viability of small size farming, Indian farmers have no clue about the future of their basic livelihood.
Around 500 small farmers from Maharashtra were personally visited and detailed one to one interactions were held. This exercise revealed the harsh realities these small farmers are facing. On the other side, both the federal and state governments have been working on only piecemeal solutions and neglecting any sustainable structural reforms. Hence, small farmers are stuck in a vicious cycle of perpetual poverty. There are numerous reports on Indian agriculture published by the government, agricultural research institutes & universities and social organizations. Unfortunately, these reports do not address the deep-rooted problems which can be solved only through structural reforms.
This research is basically focused to find out sustainable solution to the agony of the small farmers. The solutions are difficult because there are many interdependent factors, which complicate the research process. Yet, an attempt has been made to design a comprehensive model, which should consider all these factors amicably and provide a sustainable solution. This four-stage reform model has been named as 'Collective Social Entrepreneurship Model'. This model thoroughly describes the stages of structural reforms, which should pull-out the small farmers from the vicious cycle of perpetual poverty.