A decade under Modi: Farmers’ income yet to double, MSP growth slows down

Doubling farmers’ income

In February 2016, ahead of the budget for the year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in a video message that his government would ensure that farmers’ income doubled by 2022.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2019 election manifesto reiterated that it would “make all efforts to achieve this goal by 2022”, and listed several measures, ranging from cash transfer schemes to institutional reforms.

Five years later, data suggests the promise remains unfulfilled. The growth in farmers’ incomes has slowed down under the Modi government.

A government committee set up in 2016 to lay out a roadmap to achieve the target used the 2012-’13 National Sample Survey Office data to estimate that the national average annual income of Indian farmers was Rs 96,703 in 2015-’16.

Based on this, the committee set the targeted double income at Rs 192,694 (at 2015-’16 constant prices) or Rs 271,378 at current prices in 2022-’23.

To achieve those levels of income, farm income would have to grow annually by 10.4% over the next seven years, the committee calculated.

While data for 2022-’23 is not available, according to the last situational survey data released in 2021, the average annual income of farming households increased from Rs 96,703 in 2015-’16 to Rs 1,22,616 in 2018-’19.

This suggests the annual growth in farmers’ income has been mere...

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