Farm crisis: UDF wrests initiative

By Girish Menon

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, DEC. 14. With the LDF and the Government it leads being bogged down by one controversy after another, the UDF has apparently wrested the initiative by highlighting the travails of Kerala farmers.

The memorandum it presented to the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, not only narrates the woes of the farmers, but through hard statistics also points out the anomalies in the Central import duties on agricultural commodities. The UDF has virtually performed a function which the State Government should have, but unfortunately could not owing to its preoccupation with fire-fighting controversies and problems one after the other.

The UDF moves appear to be part of the Congress party's overall strategy of taking up farm issues at the national level, though the Opposition coalition's decision on meeting the Prime Minister with Kerala's problems was taken much before the Congress decided on its course of action. The farming community in the State had been worried about the adverse impact of the import duty on agricultural commodities, particularly those unique to Kerala constituting its economic backbone. Unfortunately political discourse in the last few months centered around hooch tragedies, Kannur and Parassinikkadavu. With the State Government's measures to save the farm sector having only a marginal impact on prices of agricultural commodities, farmers appeared to be a helpless lot.

The memorandum is so comprehensive that it touches upon every aspect of farming be it coconut, rubber, cardamom, tea, coffee, cashew, or paddy. It strikingly takes a different position vis a vis the WTO related problems, to argue that the country could still live with higher import duties despite the organisation's mandatory provisions. This position is diametrically opposite to the one taken by the LDF Government, which had found the WTO the root cause for all problems in the farm sector. In the case of coconut, it points out to a major lacuna in the import policy for edible oils, refusing to buy the argument that the duty was reduced after it became a member of the WTO. Even though India could impose up to 300 per cent import duty on edible oils including palm oil, it was just 27 per cent and 16.5 per cent for refined and unrefined oil respectively.

The UDF delegation pointed out the defects in the import duty on natural rubber. It chided the Centre for its failure to include rubber as an agriculture commodity even though it had been specified in the agreement of the Government with the WTO. Had this been done as in the case of coffee, tea, pepper and cardamom, the duty could have been fixed at around 150 per cent. Instead, rubber was being considered as an industrial product by the WTO with lower duty rates.

Interestingly, the UDF delegation took care not to bring in political and other issues during the meeting with Mr. Vajpayee. The Prime Minister, according to the UDF leaders, promised to take a favourable position on Kerala's demands.

The UDF has obviously sought to score some political points by petitioning the Prime Minister. In a politically charged situation prevailing in the State, the UDF delegation's attempt to distance itself from the current political issues like Kannur clashes, and highlight economic woes of the State is therefore significant. Going by the contents and arguments put forward in the memorandum, the UDF, which has constituents taking strong pro-farmer position, has done its job pretty well. The Chief Minister, Mr. E.K. Nayanar, did meet the Prime Minister shortly before he left on his foreign tour, and apprised him about the State's problems. But an all-party delegation would have sent a different kind of message, thereby underscoring the seriousness of the problems Kerala economy is facing on account of the Centre's import policy.

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Section  : Southern States
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