Kottayam: When India’s gross domestic product was announced earlier this week, agriculture was the surprise star on the list, with the sector growing 3.4 per cent. In contrast, the national GDP nose-dived 23.9 per cent, the worst among leading economies across the world.
Ironically, the uptick in the farm sector comes at a time when farm workers from different states have left for their native states in the wake of the lockdown, leaving an acute shortage of farm hands.
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Worker vacuum
In Kerala, a leading pineapple farmer has even gone to the extent of flying in workers from as far as Odisha state to fill up the vacuum of workers.
“There is an acute shortage of workers and we need them immediately so that the pineapple plants are not overrun by creepers and weeds. So we are flying in some workers who had left for their homes during the lockdown”, Jojy Joseph Valiplackal, a leading pineapple farmer based at Podimattam in Kottayam district told Gulf News.
Train services in India have not returned to normal schedule, which has prompted him to fly in some workers on emergency basis. Many farmers cannot keep their farm maintenance work pending as India’s lockdown extends indefinitely.
Airlifting farm hands
Eleven farm workers hired by Valiplackal from Ganjam district in Odisha will travel some 250km by road to the Bhubaneswar airport and then take an Indigo flight to Kochi via Hyderabad on Saturday (September 5), and will then be transported roughly 100km by van to Kottayam district where they will undergo a 2-week quarantine before starting work.
Kerala has an estimated 2 million workers from different Indian states and a large majority of them had returned home during the lockdown when special trains were introduced to take workers to their native places.
Acute labour shortage
The acute shortage of workers is affecting farmers in different parts of Kerala. Says Jacob Xavier, a senior corporate consultant who also has plantations: “Recently when I needed farm hands, I told friends and also put out the message on social media. The offer was Rs 600 daily wages, lunch on the house and pick-up and drop by car in a 30-km radius. Yet I couldn’t get even a single worker”.
Despite the lockdown-inflicted financial crisis, many Keralites are not keen to work on farms, which has led to the shortage of labour when workers from other states left, point out those in the plantation sector.
Not really shining
The positive show by the farm sector notwithstanding, India’s farm sector is bogged by numerous problems including low productivity, monsoon-dependency and too many people stuck in farm sector jobs on a national level.
Of India’s 1.30 billion population, roughly 60 per cent are dependent on the farm sector and they contribute only 15 per cent to the country’s GDP.
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