The Economics of Exhaustion

For decades, India’s economic planners have built elaborate models to estimate the returns on irrigation projects and farm mechanisation. Yet one critical asset remains largely invisible in the national balance sheet, which is the biological health of the farmer.

This omission is becoming increasingly costly as India pursues its ambition of becoming a $5-trillion economy. A growing body of evidence suggests that the country's agricultural sector is sustained not merely by land and capital but by the relentless physical sacrifice of millions of farmers. The result is a structural economic distortion that may best be described as “human mining” or the extraction of agricultural output through the gradual depletion of the human beings who produce it.

Challenging Assumptions

The concept challenges a long-standing assumption embedded within agricultural economics: that labour is a static input. In reality, labour has a biological dimension. The farmer’s health deteriorates and productivity declines. When this depreciation is ignored, both the economy and the state eventually bear the cost.

Recent evidence from Maharashtra's sugarcane belt illustrates the scale of the problem. A field study of owner-cultivators paints a picture of a workforce operating under conditions that would be unacceptable in almost any other industry. The average farmer surveyed worked nearly eleven hours a day while sleeping barely five hours a night. Chronic back and joint pain was widespread. Almost all lacked access to clean drinking water while working in the fields, exposing them to dehydration and heat stress.

Nutrition was equally alarming. Most reported consuming little or no daily protein. Many skipped meals altogether during periods of financial stress. Such conditions are not merely a public-health concern but also an economic problem.

Indeed, the study uncovered what might be called a “revenue-pain paradox.” Farmers earning higher revenues often reported higher levels of physical pain. In effect, greater earnings were being purchased through accelerated bodily deterioration. The current agricultural value chain rewards output while quietly transferring the long-term biological costs onto the producer.

Measured through the proposed Farmer Health Capital (FHC) framework, the average farmer was found to be operating at less than half of his or her optimal biological capacity. In economic terms, India is running a critical productive asset far below its potential while simultaneously accelerating its depreciation.

When farmer health deteriorates, productivity falls and indebtedness deepens. Rural families divert income towards treatment instead of investment. Illness reduces labour efficiency and lowers yields. Minor untreated ailments evolve into chronic conditions that eventually require expensive hospital interventions.

Vicious Cycle

In many farming communities, healthcare expenses account for a significant share of seasonal earnings. Financial shocks often force households to borrow from informal lenders at punitive rates. Productive assets may be sold to cover medical costs. Land itself can become collateral for survival. Yet India’s healthcare architecture remains poorly aligned with this reality.

Flagship programmes such as Ayushman Bharat have undoubtedly expanded access to hospitalisation. But they remain heavily oriented towards tertiary care. The everyday costs that matter most to farmers like outpatient consultations, diagnostic tests, transport to clinics and treatment for minor injuries often remain uncovered.

As a result, farmers postpone treatment until conditions become severe. What could have been addressed through inexpensive preventive care ultimately arrives at public hospitals as a costly emergency. The burden on both households and government finances increases.

Perhaps the most striking finding emerging from the Farmer Health Capital framework concerns farmer behaviour itself. Conventional wisdom suggests that confidence in the next cropping season depends on revenue expectations, crop insurance or access to credit. Yet statistical modelling points elsewhere. The strongest predictor of a farmer's willingness to invest in the next season is physical health.

This is intuitive. A farmer whose body is failing is unlikely to take risks, adopt new technologies or expand production. Financial incentives matter little if physical capacity has already collapsed.

The policy implications are clear. Governments should ensure timely payments from processing mills and buyers, reducing the financial stress that drives nutritional deprivation. Agricultural cooperatives should evolve into local human-capital hubs, providing drinking water, basic preventive care and ergonomic equipment.

India’s farmers constitute the foundation of the country’s food-security architecture. Allowing their physical capital to depreciate unchecked is economically irrational. Protecting it is neither charity nor populism but sound economics.

A nation that invests billions in roads, railways and industrial corridors cannot afford to neglect the human infrastructure that feeds it.

(The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.)