Читать книгу Sustainable Agriculture Systems and Technologies - Группа авторов - Страница 61

The short‐term lockdown resulting from outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic has interrupted the state supply of food and stock and is mainly influencing the economic strategy of the country. The advisory board of the government for political and fiscal concerns has informed in a report from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) that food grains constitute 77 million tons of cereals against a buffer supply requirement of 21 million tons on 1 April 2020. Moreover, this lockdown is a humanity‐related issue, in which, people are migrating back to the rural areas and reinforces the importance of having strong policies in place to tackle the decline in market availability for and sale of produce. The GoI has already announced that for the coming three months, 5 kg of free grains would be distributed to people registered under the National Food Security (NFS) Act. It is estimated that the FCI stockings may free up with help from the Government to help the migrants registered under the schemes from different states (Chakrabarti et al. 2019; Verma and Gustafsson 2020).

To overcome the current situation, the Indian Finance Minister has proclaimed a financial assistance of 1.7 trillion or INR 1.7 lakh crore rupees as subsidy to the people below the poverty line, which include 800 million people nationwide. Moreover, the GoI has announced a scheme called PM‐KISAN for Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (Varshney et al. 2020a). This scheme was offered amounts of INR 2000 thrice to the Indian farmer after every fourth month by April 2020. Despite provision of this financial assistance by the government, experts have noted that 87 million farmers in India alone have refrained from expressing their optimism. However, it stops farmer during long lockdown period to express their main concern to the government (Jat et al. 2019; Yadav et al. 2019). Mandis in the states are currently closed on account of this lockdown, preventing an influx in the income of the farmers and harvesters. Farmers require money, particularly now, because it is the season of harvest. However, the lockdown ensuing from the COVID‐19 outbreak has impacted the mental stability and wellbeing of the farmers and is a precursor to a probable cash crash. Moreover, the government has not outlined a plan‐B to deal with this situation, though “having life, hoping future” is the message to uphold currently. Some experts have claimed that the announced relief packages are pitiable and not fulfilling the requirement of the farmers, which is a serious concern.