Improving the earning capacity of the farmer would require a comprehensive policy that cuts across agriculture, education and health. Such a comprehensive policy is at present missing, says M Rajivlochan.

ALL the talk about private participation in the farm sector seems like an elaborate conundrum. After all, farming in India is perhaps the most individualistic and private of all enterprises anywhere in the world. What else would you call over 127 million farmers labouring away on their homesteads in the most adverse conditions, taking the vagaries of the monsoon and an uncaring government in their stride, working against an increasingly indifferent public to whom it matters little whether their wheat is imported or home-grown and public opinion which consistently talks of wasteful farm subsidies, free power and water? How much of all this supposed largesse actually reaches the farmer is an open question, so much so that farmers in many states have asserted in recent times that they will pay gladly for their electricity if only it is supplied to them in the first place.