Once upon a time, when farming still held dignity and community mattered more than schemes, it was the Cooperative Department and other corporations that stood as the spine of Kashmir’s agrarian logistics. I am a farmer myself, and would recollect that tractors, harvesters, threshers, seed drills – must were dealt by cooperative societies rented out or provided to farmers on need-based, community terms and managed by local elected bodies.
Then came the transition – silent, strategic for ruling political parties, and stunningly out of line from professional mandate. Suddenly, it was the Agriculture Department that became the focal agency for most of the agriculture related tools and machinery, everything from seeds to subsidies, from sprays to machinery. Cooperatives were sidelined, reduced to paperwork relics. And the farmer? He became a spectator in a circus of sarkari monopolies.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as conflict raged and administrative oversight collapsed, a quiet but deadly transition was set in motion. With the excuse of “efficiency” and “streamlining,” the Agriculture Department began:
• Taking over the purchase and distribution of machinery,
• Managing village-level assets without community representation,
• Receiving central funds under flagship schemes – and keeping all control in-house.
What used to be handled by local cooperative managers – often fellow farmers themselves – became the exclusive domain of clerks, officers and political brokers.
This transition marked the rise of what would seem like dukandari of the department. It became a vendor than a mentor.
Instead of being a department of research, training, knowledge dissemination, and outcome, Agriculture Department in Kashmir turned into a rent-seeking entity, mostly dealing with:
• Distributing machinery to favorites,
• Hoarding inputs in godowns for selective disbursal,
• Floating tenders that reeked of favoritism.
Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs), an idea imported from successful cooperative states like Punjab and Maharashtra, were launched here too – but without teeth, community control, or maintenance mechanisms. Result: abandoned units, broken machinery, and rusting hopes.
What the cooperatives could have done (and still can) is huge. If given their rightful role, cooperatives would:
• Own and maintain farm machinery through pooled funds,
• Provide transparent leasing to marginal and small farmers,
• Keep income rotating within the farming community, not in government coffers.
Imagine every village having a machinery hub, managed by its own registered cooperative, with farmers electing members, deciding rates, and rotating benefits fairly. That’s not a utopia – it was how it worked once.
But why was the shift engineered leads us to an inconvenient truth. Cooperatives are democratic, transparent, and community-driven. The Agriculture Department, on the other hand, is hierarchical, mostly opaque and easily influenced by political power centres.
Transferring power to cooperatives would have:
• Killed backdoor favoritism,
• Ended contractor-bureaucrat collusion,
• Empowered villages, not offices.
But that’s exactly what the system didn’t want. But, it’s time we asked:
• Why is the Agriculture Department running a machinery disbursal and subsidy role?
• Where did the machinery go from the last 10 CHCs announced in different districts?
• Why are cooperative societies starved of funds, and reduced to stamps for agricultural formalities?
Let cooperatives do what they were made for: serve the collective interest of farmers. And let the Agriculture Department do what it was created for: research, innovation, advisory, and outcome. For God’s sake the outcome!
Until this happens, the dukaandari continues – and the farmer continues to suffer. And get into a debt trap.
An author, a communications strategist, Dr Sanjay Parva was a debut contestant in 2024 Assembly elections. Views expressed are personal and may not necessarily reflect Ziraat Times’ editorial views.
