Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits
indianexpress.com
indianexpress.com
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.
It's almost as if deciding policy for 1.3 billion people without encountering unexpected effects like runaway inflation is a difficult task.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system#Names_...
> If you had a plot of land worth millions would you give it away?
WTF is happening in this conversation.
You're wondering why wouldn't these farmers just walk away from their farm? Well there are many reasons:
It's been in their family for generations. It's all they know how to do. They have legal obligations.
The land may be worth millions but if all the buyers are aware of the fact that it's not worth buying then all those $$'s just mean you can take another loan out against it; which is better than parting with it for nothing.
How about instead of asking questions you go do some research. I am not a farmer I just know a lot of farmers and they all drive old shitty cars and can't afford to get pay for their mothers dialysis.
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.
But also the big landowners will get a lot of money?