The past few years, especially since the introduction of the now-repealed farm laws in 2020, farmer protests have intensified. The protests and the protesting farmers have become a bigger talking point than the underlying issues.
During a panel discussion at BT Mindrush on building sustainable and resilient businesses in a VUCA world with BTTV's Managing Editor Siddharth Zarabi, Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation CMD Sailesh C. Mehta stressed on the need to 'demonstrate value' at ground level to thresh out farm ambiguities.
"The external perspective is that the Indian farmer does not want to transform or change. In our sense, he is risk averse. There is plenty at stake...there is volatility with respect to weather, price," he said.
Mehta said firms should be in a position to demonstrate value at ground level. "Then he will change and not ask for price," he said, citing an example where the firm had to create 60,000 demo plots to get their modern products across to farmers.
To a question if the big hand of the government in the fertliser space was good thing or bad thing, Mehta said, "From historical perspective, productivity would not have not come up but for Centre's policy initiatives, but when we look at today, the industry has matured and needs to be freed up...What has been good earlier, we need to grow out of it."