India's farm sector was the only one that grew in the middle of the GDP disaster. Many are saying this is a sign that rural India will lead the recovery. This is utter rubbish. The GDP numbers hides the fact that the average farmer is worse of than last year. (1/n)
In money terms farm incomes went up by 5.7%. But retail inflation for farm workers went up in the same period by 8.1%. So, real income of the average farmer DROPPED. It didn't go up. (2/n)
CMIE's data shows that the number of working farmers (excluding agricultural labourers) went up from 110 mn in Q1 2019-20 to 122 mn in Q1 2020-21. If we do a rough calculation of nominal GVA per farmer, we get a DROP of 4.7% in this June quarter compared to Q1 2019-20 (3/n)
This tells us that even though we have had a bumper crop, farmers on an average have not gained from it. This is partly because farmer incomes did not keep pace with retail inflation, and partly because reverse migration increased the load on the agri economy. (4/4)
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