4 years of Modi government 2.0: The ministry has had a tough time pushing reform and achieving its aim of improving farmers’ incomes
Narendra Tomar, Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare
If there is one poll promise the Narendra Modi government has been unable to deliver on, it is the “doubling of farm incomes”. In December 2022, Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar tabled a situation assessment survey report, ‘Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holding of Households in Rural India, 2019’, which says average monthly income of farming households was Rs 10,218. To double real incomes, produce prices had to increase at a rate of over 10 per cent, but they went up only by 2.5 per cent. Getting this done required structural changes, not mere hikes in MSP (minimum support prices), which has been taking place since 2018. The key reasons for this include the lack of storage capacity in the country, and not enough convergence of private processors with growers.