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Following the stress on the agricultural sector by the COVID-19 related lockdown, the central Government has announced medium to long term relief measures as part of an economic package. However, the package has fallen short on immediate relief to cultivators and agricultural labourers.

The agriculture sector and allied activities involve about 55% of India’s billion-plus population.

In early MAY, the Prime Minister announced an economic package for India, after which the finance minister announced details which addressed crop loan REQUIREMENTS of rural banks, MINIMUM support price for crops, funding agricultural infrastructure, income support for farmers as well as long term changes to agricultural laws.

However, farmer groups, non-governmental organisations and experts, say the package does not look into urgent relief and doesn’t address the immediate concerns of those employed in the agricultural sector.

Shweta Saini, an expert on agricultural ISSUES with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), a Delhi-based think tank, explained that the measures taken by the government and the package announced are going to have an impact in medium and long-term in coming years but fail to address immediate concerns of the farmers.

“Initially, when the lockdown was announced, the government ALLOWED the movement of harvested crops to ease woes of the farmers, and most farmers continued their agricultural activities despite all lockdown related problems. But farmers were let down by markets as they failed to get a proper price for their produce. Thereafter, the government highlighted that it is offering farmers the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) and is front-loading installment under PM-KISAN (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi), a central scheme. The point is that these two things were to be given to farmers anyways whether there was a lockdown or not,” Saini told Mongabay-India.

The announcement, multiple experts claim, was a repackaging of announcements made in the budget and raised further questions around the possibility of corporates taking over agriculture and uncertainty of rural family incomes as migrant labourers return to their villages. Additionally, some feel that the amendments to agricultural laws that were announced, while a step in the right direction, will have an impact only in the longer term.