Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, expressed concern on Wednesday about India's growing reliance on fertilisers made in China, stating that this dependence poses a severe risk to the nation's agricultural base.
Gandhi referenced a recent media report in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that said India's agrarian economy is currently facing an increasingly dire situation as a result of its reliance on foreign sources for essential agricultural inputs. He emphasised that almost 80 per cent of India's speciality fertilisers are imported from China, and that farmers are extremely concerned about a recent disruption in these supplies.
Since India is an agrarian nation, the farmer serves as the foundation of our economy. However, the weight of foreign dependence is causing that very backbone to bend today. Eighty percent of India's speciality fertilisers are imported from China, and the Chinese company has now stopped supplying them', Gandhi wrote.
Additionally, he noted that the farming community was already struggling with a lack of vital fertilisers like diammonium phosphate (DAP) and urea. The crisis has gotten worse due to the recent disruption in the supply of speciality fertilisers, especially from China. It's not the first time. “A new ‘Chinese crisis’ looms over speciality fertilisers, while farmers nationwide continue to struggle with shortages of essential fertilisers like urea and DAP,” Gandhi said. "While our farmers are growing more reliant on "Made in China," the prime minister is occupied with printing his images on fertiliser sacks."
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The Congress MP charged that the Narendra Modi-led administration was careless and had ignored numerous warnings about the dangers of becoming dependent on foreign sources. He criticised the government for failing to implement any tangible plan or policy to encourage domestic fertiliser production, making the agricultural sector susceptible to supply shocks from outside sources. "The government made no preparations even though they knew that this supply could be interrupted at any time. They had neither a plan nor a policy when it came to boosting domestic production, Rahul Gandhi continued.
"Will the Indian farmer now be helpless even in his own soil?" he asked, in a scathing indictment. "Kiska Saath, Kiska Vikas?" the farmer, engulfed in debt and despair, asks as valuable time and nutritious crops are lost.
The comments followed Gandhi's criticism of the Modi administration on the eighth anniversary of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The Congress leader referred to the GST regime as a "brutal tool of economic injustice and corporate cronyism" in a separate post on Tuesday. He claimed that the current government's implementation of the GST was intended to "punish the poor, crush MSMEs, undermine states, and benefit a few billionaire friends of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."
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