The cycle of agricultural production is such that virtually the entire farm yield comes to the market simultaneously. In a completely free and open market, the indebted small cultivator would obviously find it hard to bargain with the economically more powerful trader.6 The farmers have so far survived because the Indian state offered them a minimum support price, particularly for foodgrains.

The recent experience of Punjabi farmers with the paddy crop is perhaps symptomatic of how Punjab’s agriculture has become ‘a burden’ for food procurement agencies. This despite the fact that the political party in power in the state claims to represent agrarian interests. Although in the previous years too the farmers had found it difficult to sell their crop of paddy and later wheat, and there were reports of distress selling, their plight was particularly pitiable during the current paddy season. It was only when Punjab’s chief minister pleaded with the Indian prime minister to intervene and pressurised the central government to declare a special package for the Punjab farmer that paddy was picked up by central procurement agencies.

The paddy season this year saw a bumper crop, with no natural calamities like untimely rains to damage the produce. But when the crop was brought to the mandis (the marketing centres) the farmers were surprised to find that there were no buyers offering the minimum support price declared by the central government. The officials refused to buy, claiming that the paddy was of inferior quality. The FCI (Food Corporation of India) chief went to the extent of stating that as much as 80% of the paddy was spoilt – a claim that had no scientific basis and, as many farm scientists of the state argued, was simply not true. In fact, FCI officials rarely conducted any tests while rejecting a particular lot of paddy even though they were provided with the kits to carry out such tests.7

Interestingly, traders and rice millers were willing buyers but at a price much lower than the official support price, which would have hardly met the farmers’ costs of production. However, in the given situation, many farmers sold their paddy in distress. The traders paid them Rs 400 to 450 per quintal for the ‘super fine’ variety of paddy as against the official support price of Rs 550 and Rs 350 to 400 per quintal for the ‘common’ variety of paddy as against the official support price of Rs 510.8 The traders sold the same paddy to the official agencies at the minimum support price a few weeks later.

Most farmers, however, chose to wait it out in the mandis, in some cases for over two weeks. The local newspapers during October 2000 were splashed with pictures of farmers sleeping over paddy piled up in the mandis. The grain was everywhere and the mandis overflowed with paddy. It was downloaded wherever the farmers could find room – on roads, in school grounds, in public parks.9 The farmers were perhaps more depressed than angry! As a newspaper report states:

‘Though the farmer’s anger is coming to a boil, his attitude towards the government officials is, surprisingly, the very reverse. With folded hands, he pleads with them to lift his produce, at times virtually falling at their feet to grant him a "remunerative" rate. A telling symbol of the vicelike grip that the market binds him in.’10

Farmers were at the mercy of officials! ‘It is blood and toil for six months and we cannot afford to annoy the officials. The money we earn during these days will provide for our family during the next six months as well as help us purchase fertilisers for the forthcoming wheat crop,’ a farmer in the Khanna mandi, Asia’s biggest grain market, told Bajinder Pal Singh, a reporter. However, not all of them could wait or bear the humiliation. There were several front page reports in local newspapers of small and marginal farmers taking the extreme step of committing suicide out of frustration and humiliation.