
Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits - poloolop
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/chhattisgarh-sonia-gandhi-launches-rajiv-gandhi-kisan-nyay-scheme-6421246/
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hannofcart
It's not all farmers. This scheme is limited to farmers of one state,
Chhattisgarh.

Furthermore, this is one of the few states that the Indian National Congress
(INC) holds power in the state legislative assembly. At the center however,
INC has little sway, and is actually in the opposition.

It is to be noted that the party ruling at the center, and indeed, most of the
states in the union is a different one: Bhartiya Janata Party, that the Indian
Prime Minister belongs to.

Pointing this out because the title of this post makes it look like all
farmers in India are getting cash benefits and that it's a national scheme.
While in reality it's anything but.

In fact, the central government has been dragging its feet on any sort of
direct cash transfers to the poor, or even small businesses for that matter,
choosing instead to hand out loans to businesses in order to boost growth.

~~~
fooker
>In fact, the central government has been dragging its feet on any sort of
direct cash transfers to the poor.

It's almost as if deciding policy for 1.3 billion people without encountering
unexpected effects like runaway inflation is a difficult task.

~~~
hannofcart
Am not advocating for one or the other. Am not an economist.

My use of the expression `dragging its feet`, was in light of most prominent
Indian economists advocating that the government must increase spending now
without worrying about the deficit.

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bryanlarsen
Wow, that's lots of money. If they're growing wheat, that's 34 bushels worth
at $5 per bushel. I don't know what yields are like in India, but in
Saskatchewan, Canada 34 bushels per acre of wheat is not a great crop, but
it's not a bad one either.

In other words, that payment could double a typical Saskatchewan farmer's
gross income. And considering that the farmer's expenses are typically 90% of
the income, that's about 10x the net income. (A typical Saskatchewan farmer
has about 2000 acres of land).

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pradn
Agricultural landholdings in India are pretty small. The average size of a
landholding is 1.08 acres. Large landholders, defined as those holding 10+
hectares, hold about 8% of the total agricultural land. (Among them, the
average holding size is 15 acres.)

[http://agcensus.nic.in/document/agcen1516/T1_ac_2015_16.pdf](http://agcensus.nic.in/document/agcen1516/T1_ac_2015_16.pdf)

~~~
bryanlarsen
I should have left the farm size out of my post, it's fairly irrelevant. The
relevant point is that it would double a Saskatchewan wheat farm's gross
income whether it was 0.5 or 5000 acres.

~~~
pradn
Yes, makes sense.

Per-acre of per-bushel support doesn't work as well when many folks hold such
little land. The money required for subsistence is constant per person.
Smallholders may not be able to do non-farm work to make up for their low
farm-based pay right now.

------
ideals
> “Through the Rajiv Gandhi Kisan NYAY Yojana, steps have been taken to
> provide all requisite resources to the farmers of Chhattisgarh, encourage
> crop production and send funds directly to their bank accounts. There is a
> plan to include landless tribal agricultural labourers in the second phase
> of this scheme. This is a very unique decision which will make them all
> self-sufficient,” said Sonia Gandhi.

Next phase is providing ubi to labourers who don't have any land. This sounds
like a great step forward.

Interestingly coming out at the same time as people are criticizing Andrew
Yang and Jack Dorsey for their UBI initiatives.

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wheaties
Sounds great, now how do they really plan on making sure the money actually
gets to the farmer?

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signal11
Many (all?) Indian banks have to offer a no-frills zero-balance bank account
by law. Since many banks are government owned, it’s quite easy for such banks
to offer these accounts. A lot of welfare schemes directly transfer the money
to the recipients’ bank accounts. I suspect this will, too.

To prevent welfare fraud, many bank accounts have been linked with a biometric
database called “Aadhar”. In fact I believe all Indian residents need to have
registered their biometrics to operate a bank account (as you can imagine,
people who don’t receive welfare aren’t huge fans of this rather invasive
approach).

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bizzleDawg
Quick aside since "lakh" is used in the summary: In Indian numbering, a lakh
is 100,000. There is also a crore, which is 10M.

~~~
kranner
It is spelt "lakh" or "lac" in Roman script.

~~~
bizzleDawg
doh! Updated, thanks.

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wtmt
Mods, please correct this title. The title here is not the title of the news
report and is misleading. You could include that this is in just one state in
India (something like “Farmers in Indian state of Chhattisgarh to get direct
cash benefits” may be easier to understand and appropriate).

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BurningFrog
So... it's a payout to landowners?

~~~
enitihas
You have to realize that vast majority of India farm land owners are small
farmers (very very small compared to US farm sizes). In my town and villages,
2 acre would be considered a lot of land for a farmer, and I don't even know
if there was anybody nearby with anything like 10 acres of land. Most farmers
own very small pieces of land. The scheme in question will help these farmers
and is a very good step for national food production.

There are some states with somewhat more centralised farms, but the state
mentioned by the article is not one. Large scale industrial farming is very
rare in India outside of a few select areas.

~~~
BurningFrog
So the small landowners will get a little money.

But also the big landowners will get a lot of money?

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Vysero
That's awesome, I think it's a great idea. I wish they had a similar situation
setup here in the US. Our farmers are and have been in dire straights for a
long time now and they could use the help.

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known
State governments should reject Modi regime's stimulus package and instead
seek autonomy to print local currency
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer)

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Interesting. Never heard of local currency. There is also the concept of dual
currency at national level. One normal free floating with varying conversion
rates and other pegged to USD

