THIS is indeed the situation that had confronted this country 13 years ago. We met it but never modified, as occasion required, the farmers’ rights clause which we received as part of the Jagan legacy and the constitution. It was in this way that the rice farmers were able to get representation where it belonged, and the second major sector of the economy of this country.
But while the Minister of Agriculture has amended the clauses for prompt payment for rice farmers’ produce to break the economic shackles of the past, it is necessary to go on to completion of the whole process by stating explicitly in the constitution itself that farmers’ produce are for economic benefits and is not intended to be ever again used as an instrument of exploitation of man by man.
Then take the role of rice farmers: the farmer’s labour is merely an input in the miller’s machine, to be used at maximum productivity while being rewarded at the minimum sustainable level. The millers use the labour of the labourer while refusing recognition of the rice farmer himself. He is only valued for the commodity which he sold in the form of the labour which he supplied. In his own right as a human being, he is counted little.
Work was strictly the price paid for sustenance – it was not a creative experience designed to develop the individual personality in any human kind of way. Since the formation of the farmers group, it lacks the means to make prompt payments or adequate interests; it has no method available for accountancy. So, in the ordinary way, a farmer finds himself decked out in the trappings, only to be saddled with the continuing burden of not receiving prompt payment for his paddy.