State of Indian Farmers: A Study

Agriculture plays a key role in shaping India’s economy not only by sustaining the livelihood of millions of households, but also by contributing a substantial share in the country’s GDP. However in recent years the share of agriculture and its allied sectors in the growth pie has been declining gradually and this has been causing some concerns. There is also much talk of a systemic crisis in the agrarian sector reflected largely by the disturbing trends of farmer’s suicide in various parts of the country due to increasing debt, crop failures, competition from the imports etc. Farmer’s concerns have also been at the centre of the government’s decision to allow foreign investment in multi-brand retail. The land acquisition problem is also a big concern for them. Framer’s issues have taken centre stage and there is a renewed focus on them among policymakers and the media. However, except for a few surveys, case studies and sound bites, we still do not know how a large mass of farmers are living, what their conditions are, and what they are thinking about issues related to them and their sector.

In order to address this lacuna, Lokniti - Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) is conducting a comprehensive nationwide study among farmer’s households spread across the country.

Method:

We selected an individual from the voters list. Once we selected the individual (who could be either male or female and of any age), we would treat that house in which the selected person live as our selected household. So we are using an indirect method of household selection, but ultimately selecting the household.

We interviewed that person in the selected household who is mainly engaged in agriculture. (We assumed we would get about 97-98 percent male in middle age or elderly in our sample who is mainly engaged in agriculture work).

To know the perception of women on agriculture we decided to interview one women in that household using a very short questionnaire. We also assumed in most cases, we would interview a middle age person, so we had a one page questionnaire to interview one young person in that family (age 18-22 either male or female). We sampled 30 people from the electoral roll in one village. Those 30 people were treated as 30 household once people were selected. If we visited someone's house and found out that the selected particular family does not depend upon agriculture, we did not conduct the interview in that family. The criteria were that the selected family must be engaged in agriculture in some way. For this reason we sampled 30 people/ household so that we may meet about 20-22 families which are engaged in agriculture and we conducted interviews in those families.

This study is spread over 18 major states with a randomly selected sample of 5480 farmers.

Training Workshop and Fieldwork

Training workshop was held in all eighteen states separately in presence of their state coordinator and supervisor. Training was imparted in their local language about survey research and the details of the questionnaires. Students were also told about the importance of this study and its uniqueness. In total in all 18 states taken together there were approximately 280 investigators in the field who collected the data from the farmers. The field work has almost been completed in all the states. Presently Lokniti is the process of collecting data from across India.

Objectives
The objective of this study is to look at the following:

• Assess the condition of farmers and farmer households
• Find out the level of indebtedness of farmer households
• Look at the reasons for agrarian distress and farmer suicides
• Assess the effectiveness of government policies for farmers
• Look at the farming practices and preferences among farmers
• Gauge the level of awareness and acceptance of new farming techniques and crops
• Find out the attitudes and opinions of farmers on key issues related to farming
• Find out farmer concerns and whether they differ from state to state
• Find out the political preferences and choices of farmers
• Generate indicators on the status of farmers and farming in order to facilitate policy

Lok Sabha Elections 2014:A Tracker Poll

In the run up to the Lok Sabha elections scheduled for 2014, Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in collaboration with the IBN Network is conducting a nation-wide election tracker survey in the month of January 2014. The main aim of this exercise is to track the mood of the nation, on key socio political and economic issues in the run up to the national parliamentary elections due in 2014. The first round of project was conducted in July with a grand nationwide study with a sample size of 30,000 respondents spread across 1120 locations 267 randomly selected Parliamentary constituencies in 18 States of India. This large-scale first round sample is being followed by smaller-sized survey culminating in the customary National Election Study that CSDS conducts during every Lok Sabha election.

During this second round we are doing a sample size of 17,030 spread across in 18 states in India. The finalization of questionnaire and codebook is in process at Lokniti and the fieldwork is likely to be completed by the mid of January.