later

Bogus farms and apathetic bureaucrats

by and large Cooperative farming societies fell into two categories:

Type#1: by big farmers = bogus farms

• They’d setup bogus cooperative farms by showing agri.labourers/tenants as bogus members. But in reality none of them owned the land individually.
• this was done to evade land ceiling and tenancy reform laws.

• Adding insult to the injury: government even gave them subsidies for seeds, fertilizers etc.
• At times, non-working members had been enrolled in order to fulfil the minimum requirements of registration.
• Even in legit/genuine cooperative farming societies, the rich farmers dominate the management positions.
• Sometimes societies setup with members of just one or two families to get various subsidies/support.

Type#2: by State sponsorship= apathetic bureaucrats

• State sponsored cooperative farms as part of pilot projects under FYP.
• Government would allot land to the landless, SC/ST, Displaced persons etc.
• but they did not get adequate support from government agencies for irrigation, electricity, seeds-fertilizer, extension services etc.
• these farms were run like government-sponsored projects rather than genuine, motivated, joint efforts of the cultivators. Result? These experiments were unsuccessful. No gain in productivity.
• Later, those farmers started cultivating land individual (though on papers, the land continued to be owned by the ‘cooperative societies’.)

#Epicfail in Bihar:

• Cooperative farming societies were formed on Bhoodan land- for the landless labourers.
• But later, they started individual farming, although officially the land still continues to be in the name of the societies.

Free riders

• Some member-farmers become lazy, thinking why bother when we’ll get the same amount of profit in proportion of the land owned. Just like those free-rider students in MBA/Engineering College who do not contribute anything for the powerpoint projects yet get full credits/marks for being member of the group.
• This demotivated sincere farmers from working hard on such cooperative farms.
• + Entry of idiots with political patronage and caste affiliations entering in cooperative farming activities, with their own vested interests.
• Ultimately, nobody takes interest in the actual farming and entire project turns flop.

Overall, Cooperative farming didn’t grow beyond the government projects and the bogus cooperatives.