From parched fields to prosperity

FARMER PROSPERITY CAN BE REAL IF INNOVATION IS SCALED WITH COLLABORATION BETWEEN ALL STAKEHOLDERS

- ASHOK GULATI ISHITA MANDLA

VICTOR HUGO ONCE wrote “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.” In contemporary India, in the midst of drought in 2015-16, Prime Minister Narendra Modi floated an idea to double farmers’ real incomes by 2022-23.

He called it his dream as he knew that if peasantry prospers, India will prosper. Even Mahatma Gandhi said that India lives in villages. But today, the economic condition in villages is not very good. They are still lagging behind in basic infrastructure. To the best of our knowledge, no independent study has been undertaken about the outcome of PM Modi’s idea of doubling farmers’ incomes. However, at ICRIER, we have researched on this issue and our conclusion is that the achievement was less than 50%.

Almost at the same time, in a drought-stricken district (Beed) in Maharashtra, someone else—Mayank Gandhi—floated an idea of Krishikul under the Global Vikas Trust (GVT) to augment farmers’ incomes. He and his team of GVT convinced farmers to shift from traditional crops of soyabean and cotton to fruit crops such as papaya, custard apple, sweet lime, guava, pomegranate, mulberry, bananas, etc. The result has been astounding. As per an independent evaluation study by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2024, the per acre income of farmers increased by more than 10 times, from |38,700 to €3.93 lakh within a short transition period. So far, GVT has planted more than 6.7 crore fruit trees (cumulatively) in about 43,000 acres belonging to roughly 30,000 farm families spread across 5,000 villages. Now the issue is—if this can be done in Maharashtra’s Beed, why it can’t be replicated and scaled up to other districts and states? That’s where the role of the state and central governments comes in.