The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a farmer unions body, has hit out at Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Chouhan for his recent statement in Parliament that farmers’ incomes have doubled under the Modi rule.The SKM said the farmers’ condition in the country presented a sorry picture. It said the government’s assurance of minimum support price (MSP) remained on paper.”MSP exists only on paper, with less than 15 per cent of crops being procured at MSP currently. How can the Agriculture Minister claim that farmers’ incomes have doubled when 31 farmers are committing suicides in the country daily due to debt under the Narendra Modi regime. More than five lakh farmers, agricultural workers and migrant labourers have ended their lives in the last 12 years,” it said.Talking to The Tribune, All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) leader P Krishna Prasad said these were not statistics, but a national crisis. He said farmers were forced to sell their produce below MSP while the central dispensation claims of “supporting” the community.”Various farmer union bodies have long demanded the implementation of a prescribed formula for calculating the MSP as suggested in the Swaminathan Committee report. The formula recommends that the MSP set by the government should be 50 percent higher than the paid-out cost incurred by the farmers, plus the imputed value of family labour and the imputed rental value of owned land plus interest on fixed capital. As a formula, this comprehensive cost is called C2,” he said.”At the moment, when setting the MSP, the government calculates the cost to the farmer as only the paid-out cost plus imputed value of family labour under the A2+FL formula. As costs borne by the farmer on account of the rental value of the owned land or the interest on fixed capital are not taken into account, the A2+FL cost is lower than the C2 cost,” he added.AIKS general secretary Vijoo Krishnan said farmers had been pushed deeper into losses.”Agrarian distress is haunting our farmers thanks to the policies of the Modi government. The recent example is the suicide of two brothers in Punjab’s Faridkot due to mounting debt. They were dealing with a severe financial crisis along with pending loans from arhtiyas (commission agents) and banks. And then our agriculture minister says everything is fine and farmers have doubled their income,” he said.He said the West Asia conflict has only exacerbated the agriculture situation in the country. “More than half of India’s crude oil comes from the Gulf yet the reckless foreign policy of the Modi government has put the livelihoods of Indian farmers at risk,” Krishnan added.