Centre to Conduct Pan-India Survey to Assess Farmers’ Plight

In order to evaluate the plight of farmers, the Centre will conduct a pan-India survey to find out their income and indebtedness among other issues for the current crop year i.e. July to June.

Minister of State for Agriculture, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in a written reply to Lok Sabha told that the 'Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households' will be carried out during the 77^th round of the National Sample Survey in the current year.

He said that the survey aims at providing a "complete assessment of the situation of agricultural households in the country that includes their income, expenditure and indebtedness".

It must be noted that the last such survey was held in the year 2012-13 (crop year). After that, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has not conducted any such assessment.

The minister further said "as such, the comparable estimates for increase in income of agricultural families during the years 2014 to 2018 are not available,"

Shekhawat added that the periodicity of such an assessment is decided on the basis of needs and requirements of the concerned ministry, availability of resources and manpower, adequacy of the current data, emerging areas of worry and development priorities of the government.

He mentioned that given the immensity of the nation's size and resources involved, the NSSO performs other surveys on household consumer expenditure as well as employment-unemployment after a gap of 5 years.

Shekhawat said the inter-ministerial committee on doubling farmers' income by the year 2022 has also considered the estimates of agriculture households' revenue obtained from the 70^th round of NSS survey data as the base level income.