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By:

Parashram Patil

14 January 2026 at 3:19:45 pm

The Plough and the Spreadsheet

While global farm policy obsesses over land, capital and climate, it still ignores the health of the person behind the plough. The world’s agricultural debates have acquired an oddly abstract quality. Ministers and leaders argue over climate finance, development banks model productivity curves, and economists refine forecasts for food security. Yet the central figure in agriculture - the farmer - often disappears into the spreadsheet. This omission is one reason why so many well-intentioned...

The Plough and the Spreadsheet

While global farm policy obsesses over land, capital and climate, it still ignores the health of the person behind the plough. The world’s agricultural debates have acquired an oddly abstract quality. Ministers and leaders argue over climate finance, development banks model productivity curves, and economists refine forecasts for food security. Yet the central figure in agriculture - the farmer - often disappears into the spreadsheet. This omission is one reason why so many well-intentioned agricultural reforms fail. More than 500 million smallholder farming families produce a substantial share of the world's food. Their economic reality is immediate and unforgiving. A failed monsoon, a medical emergency, an unexpected pest infestation or a spike in borrowing costs can erase years of accumulated savings. Survival is measured in whether there is enough money to buy seeds for the next sowing season. Vast Disconnect The institutions attempting to help them inhabit a different universe. Multilateral lenders, climate negotiators and national planning commissions demand measurable indicators, scalable interventions and econometric certainty. Local distress that cannot be quantified rarely becomes policy. As a result, agricultural programmes often look elegant in conference halls but unravel in the fields. For decades, agriculture has been treated as an engineering problem. Raise yields by improving irrigation, distributing better seeds, subsidising fertiliser or expanding mechanisation. Health, meanwhile, has occupied an entirely different policy silo, regarded largely as a welfare expenditure rather than a productive investment. A farmer suffering from untreated illness, chronic malnutrition, heat stress or mental exhaustion is not simply a patient. He or she represents diminished productive capacity. Every missed day during sowing or harvesting carries consequences that ripple through the supply chain. Lower labour efficiency means lower output, higher production costs and ultimately greater food-price volatility. This insight is captured in the emerging concept of Farmer Health Capital. It argues that agricultural productivity is determined not merely by land, machinery and technology but by the physical and mental condition of those who work the land. Labour is not a fixed variable. It is a health-adjusted asset. Viewed through this lens, rural healthcare ceases to be a fiscal burden. It becomes productive infrastructure, no less important than irrigation canals or storage facilities. Investments in preventive healthcare, occupational safety and accessible medical services generate measurable returns through higher yields, lower labour losses and greater resilience against climatic shocks. That is a far more persuasive argument for finance ministries than appeals to compassion alone. A similar failure of translation bedevils climate policy. International agencies routinely urge smallholders to adopt agroforestry, diversify crops and restore degraded ecosystems. These impose immediate costs on farmers whose financial horizon rarely extends beyond the next harvest. Expecting impoverished cultivators to absorb these costs in pursuit of global carbon targets is politically unrealistic and economically naïve. Climate policy succeeds only when ecological benefits become commercial benefits. Advances in natural-resource accounting now make that increasingly possible. Carbon captured by diversified farms and food forests can be measured with growing precision. When thousands of small farms are aggregated through Farmer Producer Organisations, these environmental gains become marketable assets capable of accessing voluntary carbon markets and climate-finance mechanisms. The principle is straightforward. A farmer should not be paid only for producing food. He should also be compensated for producing environmental services. That transforms sustainability from a moral obligation into a reliable secondary income stream. The practical agenda is hardly revolutionary. Agricultural credit can be bundled with affordable health insurance so that illness does not force distress sales of land or livestock. Governments can finance digital platforms enabling farmer collectives to participate in carbon markets that remain inaccessible to individuals. Public-private partnerships can complement investments in roads and warehouses with mobile rural health services timed to critical agricultural seasons. Farmer’s Health None of these measures requires reinventing global agriculture but merely recognising an inconvenient truth. Economists have long understood the value of physical capital. They increasingly appreciate natural capital. Human capital has become a familiar policy cliché. Yet in agriculture, the health of the farmer still occupies surprisingly little space in macroeconomic thinking. Climate volatility, ageing rural populations and growing food insecurity demand a more sophisticated understanding of productivity. The future of agriculture will depend not only on smarter seeds or better satellites but also on healthier farmers. The world’s agricultural planners have spent decades measuring the fertility of the soil. It is time they devoted equal attention to the resilience of the hands that cultivate it. (The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.)

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Mamata is seeing a ghost of Bangladesh behind the massive outrage and waves of protest over rape and murder of the trainee doctor. And the reasons are many.

It’s been over a fortnight. Yet with each passing day the voice of protest is getting louder and stronger. From the streets of Kolkata it’s pouring into roads of hinterland. The cry for justice for a rape victim has consolidated into a wail of demands to set a lot of wrongdoings right. Here in lies the fear and trepidation. Wasn’t the issue that brought the youth of Bangladesh out on the thoroughfares a simple, innocent one of quota reform?

The chief minister of Bengal, known for understanding the pulse of people better than many, was quick to read the signages floating in the political horizon.

The most obvious reason for her to be tensed is that both the regime change in Bangladesh and the mass protest in Bengal, were student-driven to begin with. The two incidents---end of 15 year old Sheikh Hasina government and turbulence in West Bengal, over the heinous crime, falling back to back, the first on August 5th and the latter from August 9th onwards, give natural scope for comparisons. More so, because in both the cases the movement strayed beyond an affected constituency to include aggrieved people at large, cutting across socio-economic demography. If the quota reform protest started by students in Bangladesh became a mass uprising against an autocratic regime, the campaign demanding justice for the rape victim and overall safety and security of women in Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal soon snowballed into a movement of no-confidence against the government. Slogans--”Mamata must resign” also got floated in social media much in line with the call for ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In fact “Resignation of Hasina” became the single point agenda into which all other fringe demands coalesced.

Incidentally, even before people started drawing parallels, that there could be a thread of commonality in the way the upheaval in Bangladesh and Bengal played out, Mamata was quick to point out that the Opposition were trying to pull off a Bangladesh by politicizing the tragic incident: “A coordinated approach has been executed by the BJP and the CPIM with support from the Centre to defame Bengal and exploit the situation....They want to make a Bangladesh here. They are taking cues from student unrest in Bangladesh and are attempting to capture similarly. I have no longing for the chair. I came here to serve people.”

Not only Mamata, her political lieutenants are consistently equating the turmoil in Bengal with the mayhem in Bangladesh. Cabinet minister for North Bengal development Udayan Guha threatened to take stern action against those, who would be trying to exploit the situation by emulating a Bangladesh like movement. “ Even after the hospital was vandalised, the police did not open fire on anyone. The police will not allow a Bangladesh type situation. We will not allow Bengal to turn into Bangladesh, Guha thundered.

Is the government’s fear unfounded?

Apart from the similarities on ground zero, as to how and where the future course of events are heading to, there are ample reasons for Bengal to mull on-- as to what led to a Bangladesh like boiling point. To begin with, it’ll be appropriate to talk of Bangladesh and the prevailing situation, that made the students’ protest become big in magnitude. The students were out on the streets because of a high reservation in public jobs. Unemployment and stagnant job market in private sector coupled with a high rate of inflation drove the educated youth to rebel against the government.

But soon the students found enormous number of sympathisers, who were equally at the receiving end. According to Bangladesh citizens, the last two terms of the Sheikh Hasina government were a mockery of democracy. Even elections would be compromised. As Hasina grew from strength to strength, she politicized institutions. The rank and file of police owed allegiance to the ruling dispensation. Extortion, harrassment and raids by police and people in power became rampant. An atmosphere of fear and repression reigned and people got restless to overthrow the government.

Politicization of institutions has been happening in Mamata government too. Allegations are quite strong that police in Bengal functions at the beck and call of political bosses. The lapses and alleged loopholes on the part of police in handling the rape and murder of the young doctor have yet again revealed a sense of confused or misplaced loyalty.

But above everything else both Hasina and Mamata governments allegedly seem to have twined in accepting corruption as a way of life. In Bangladesh jobs of primary and secondary teachers got sold at premium, Rs 10-12 lakh in the Hasina regime. Even police had to pay up for prized postings and transfers. In Bengal busting of the teacher’s recruitment scam has revealed how unsuccessful and ineligible candidates got government jobs in schools in exchange of bribes.

Similarities are multiple and inescapable. Mamata has good reasons to be apprehensive. It’s not only she, who can see and connect the dots. People, out on the streets, clamoring for justice, can see a providential pattern somewhere in the unfolding of future events in these two places-- Bangladesh and Bengal. True, they share more than 2,217 odd km of border. They share the same umbilical cord, other than language, culture, ethos, icons. Even emotions are the same. So she cannot take any risk.

(The writer is a senior jounalist based in Kolkata. Views personal)

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