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India today is no longer a nation haunted by famine. We are the world’s second-largest producer of rice and wheat, self-sufficient in cereals, and blessed with abundant sunlight, fertile land, and a wide network of rivers and irrigation canals. Yet, paradoxically, our farmers remain the most heavily protected, subsidized, and politically courted group in the country – while also being among the poorest.
They receive benefits across every stage of the agricultural value chain: free or subsidized electricity, fertilizers, irrigation water, seeds, credit, tax exemptions, income transfers, and guaranteed minimum prices for key crops. This is not a marginal safety net, it is an elaborate state-sponsored cushion. And yet, after seven decades of independence, the rural distress narrative remains unchanged.
The uncomfortable question is: Why?
The Scale of Protection
The numbers speak for themselves. In 2022–23, farm input subsidies in India reached an astonishing US $48 billion, a jump of nearly 50 percent from the year before. Fertilizer and electricity alone absorb three-quarters of this outlay. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) sends direct cash transfers to over 110 million farmers; state governments waive farm loans and supply electricity for irrigation either free or at nominal rates. The Food Corporation of India purchases wheat and rice at Minimum Support Prices often well above market levels, ensuring procurement even when the grain is surplus. Crop insurance premiums are heavily subsidized, and solar pumps are distributed at discounts of up to 60 percent.
By developing-country standards, this is among the highest state support levels in the world, though because India has such a large farming population, the benefit per farmer remains lower than in developed economies. Still, taken together, it is a policy architecture built not for resilience, dependence.
The Reform Windows We Slammed Shut
India’s agriculture has been crying out for modernization, and reform attempts have been made.
The Farm Laws of 2020 sought to open markets beyond the state-controlled mandi system, allow contract farming with assured prices, and encourage private investment in storage and logistics. Studies suggested this could raise farmer incomes by 13–17 percent. Yet the laws were rolled back under pressure from powerful farm lobbies. Similarly, reforms to rationalize electricity supply (such as Gujarat’s successful Jyotigram Yojana feeder separation model) and to promote diversification away from the rice–wheat cycle have been proposed for years, but seldom scaled nationwide.
Infrastructure upgrades, cold chains, warehousing, soil health programs, remain underfunded or politically unpopular because they deliver benefits over the long term, unlike the instant gratification of subsidies. In short, every time India has inched toward market-oriented agriculture, vested interests have pulled it back.
The Costs of Eternal Subsidy
This protection comes at a heavy price, fiscal, environmental, and strategic. The Union Budget for 2025–26 allocates over ₹3.7 lakh crore to food and fertilizer subsidies alone. Free electricity fuels reckless groundwater extraction; agriculture consumes 87 percent of India’s groundwater, with depletion rates in Punjab and Haryana now among the world’s fastest. Fertilizer overuse is degrading soil health and polluting water bodies. MSP procurement skews cropping patterns, leading to mountains of surplus grain, some of which literally rots in warehouses.
WTO members have repeatedly questioned India’s compliance with subsidy caps. In the name of protecting farmers, we are entrenching inefficiencies that will be harder to unwind with every passing year.
The Strategic Risk of Standing Still
National pride rightly fuels India’s rejection of external pressure, such as recent American demands to open our farm sector. But pride should not blind us to structural weakness. Nearly half our population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood, in a $4 trillion economy aspiring to developed status, this is an anomaly.
Developed nations grew rich not by perpetually shielding their farmers, but by making them more productive, diversified, and competitive. If India continues to treat agriculture as a political entitlement machine rather than an economic sector to be retooled, the result will be stagnation masked as stability. Our resistance to reform is not a victory, it is a slow surrender of our developmental ambition.
Honest Introspection Trumps Defiance
India’s farmers deserve dignity, security, and prosperity, but not through endless subsidies and market insulation. True protection comes from empowerment: giving farmers the tools, technology, market access, and freedom to prosper without leaning on the exchequer.
The choice before us is clear: we can either keep writing ever-larger subsidy cheques and hope that the underlying problems solve themselves, or we can reform boldly, accepting short-term turbulence for long-term gain. Defiance against foreign diktats is admirable, but defiance against our own need for reform is self-defeating.
If we truly want to stand tall on the world stage, we must first stand firm on the fields of India – not in protest lines, but in productivity.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.