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Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits
- wheaties 6y agoSounds great, now how do they really plan on making sure the money actually gets to the farmer?
- signal11 6y agoMany (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).
- ideals 6y ago> “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.
- known 6y agoState 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 6y agoInteresting. 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
- warranty 6y agoBalkanisation of India won’t happen. Keep trying though.
- Karupan 6y agoWhy should the do that?
- fooker 6y agoLol
- Vysero 6y agoThat'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.
- bizzleDawg 6y agoQuick 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 6y agoIt is spelt "lakh" or "lac" in Roman script.
- bizzleDawg 6y agodoh! Updated, thanks.
- rohan1024 6y agoThe Indian numbering system names numbers up to 10^18. The vedic number system goes even further up to 10^62 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system#Names_of_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system#Names_...
- bryanlarsen 6y agoWow, 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).
- mooneater 6y agoThe farmers with 2000 acres are not the ones I'm most worried about
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- green-bottle 6y agoI do not think a typical Indian farmer would own anything close to 2000 acres of land. Most farming in India is not mechanised but is instead highly dependent on human labour. From what I know a typical farmer would probably own only a couple of acres of land (many in single digits? anecdata with no citation) which is cultivated by their family subject to further fragmentation when inherited by the next generation.
- rohan1024 6y agoI think their must be clause in there somewhere which forbids from paying to already rich farmer or someone who has more than 10 acres of land.
- pradn 6y agoAgricultural 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
- BurningFrog 6y agoSo... it's a payout to landowners?
- jacknews 6y agoexactly, what the heck
- Vysero 6y ago? I am confused by this remark.. here in the US farmers are some of the poorest people in the country. Their land is nothing more than a burden and they live at or near poverty levels.
- balfirevic 6y agoSurely they must be strictly better off than not owning any land?
- Vysero 6y agoYou think so? Have you ever tried farming before? It's a rough life, and they never make money; they live off subsidies. When you own land you have to care for it and that costs: money, time and a substantial amount of effort. Most farmers I know would love to sell, but there is no one willing/able to buy.
- balfirevic 6y agoCan they give it away? Can they let it go unmaintained?
- Vysero 6y agoIf you had a plot of land worth millions would you give it away? No, they can't let it go unmaintained that's illegal.
- hannofcart 6y agoIt'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 6y ago>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 6y agoAm 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.
- wtmt 6y agoMods, 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).