NITI Aayog 'knows' what no one else does: Farmers’ income doubled in 7 years

Very few are aware that the NITI Aayog claims farmers’ income more than doubled in seven fiscals of FY16-FY23 — as the Centre had promised but never claimed to have delivered.

On October 10, 2025, this claim was made by Aayog member Ramesh Chand in his presidential address at the annual conference of the Indian Association of Social Science Institutions (IASSI) in Dehradun. Chand is one of the founding members of the Aayog (since 2015) with a Union minister of state ranking.

Also read: How coconut shells have sparked trade boom in coastal Karnataka

It came to light when a business daily reported it on January 8, 2026, based on the IASSI’s quarterly journal, which is not in the public domain.

NITI Aayog claims farmers’ income more than doubled

In a paper presented at the IASSI, “Agriculture in Meeting Aspirations of Rising India”, which The Federal accessed, Chand claimed farmers’ income showed “108 per cent increase” in seven years between FY16-FY23. He said, “The increase in income of producers from crop plus livestock sectors is 107 per cent. Thus, even when allied activities like fishery and forestry are excluded, the growth in producers’ income from agriculture remains the same.”

An investigative report of May 2024, which checked with 32 farmers listed in southern states, said 15 of them denied doubling of income. Some, for whom the income had doubled, said it had “nothing to do with the Union government scheme” and one farmer even said he was taken to someone else’s farm and photographed.

That is, farmers’ income doubled from crop production alone.

He went further to say, “During the last 10 years, the income of producers (farmers' income from agriculture) has experienced more than 10 per cent annual growth, which is higher than the growth achieved in the manufacturing sector and the rest of the economy. In these 10 years, the income of agricultural producers has risen by 126 per cent, i.e., 26 per cent more than doubling of farmers' income from agriculture.”

The 10-year period above refers to FY15-FY24.

Interestingly, Chand used the GDP numbers, released by the National Statistics Office (NSO), for his estimates, which no economist is known to have ever used.

Also read: Why land disputes continue to plague Andhra Pradesh despite promises of reform

Before looking at his data, here are a few contradictory findings:

1. On January 5, 2026, Ashok Gulati, former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) and a fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), wrote in a national daily, “To the best of our knowledge, no independent study has been done about the outcomes of doubling farmers’ incomes. However, at ICRIER, we have researched this issue, and our conclusion is that the achievement was less than 50 per cent.” He is referring to the same FY16-FY23 period.

2. On December 2, 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare issued a statement on the subject, “Doubling the income of farmers”, making no such claims, not mentioning or acknowledging Chand’s finding in October 2025. Rather, it listed the Centre’s initiatives, including 28 schemes to support farmers, and passed the burden to states, saying “agriculture is a state subject”.

While discussing the subject, the ministry also referred to two old reports: (i) The 2022 report of Indian Council on Agricultural Research (ICAR) which listed 75,000 farmers who had more than doubled their income and (ii) The NSSO’s Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of Agricultural Households of the July 2018-June 2019 period showed that monthly income of farm households increased from Rs 6,426 in 2012-13 to Rs 10,218 in 2018-19 (by 59 per cent).

Why claims are misleading

These claims are misleading too and have been debunked earlier. Here is why.

The ICAR’s 2022 claim about 75,000 farmers doubling their income was fact-checked by two investigative reports.

One such report of April 2024 checked the listed names from Delhi-NCR and found some of those were students and youths not engaged in farming, and some didn’t have the land claimed by the ICAR.

Another investigating report of May 2024 checked with 32 farmers listed in southern states, and said 15 of them denied doubling of income (“either completely false, or massively exaggerated”). Some, for whom the income had doubled, said it had “nothing to do with the Union government scheme”, and one farmer even said he was taken to someone else’s farm and photographed.

Also read: Why Bihar's Sakri residents are doubting Amit Shah’s promise of reopening state's sugar mills

A third investigating report, also from May 2024, found the Centre’s flagship PM-AASHA scheme (Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan) supporting farmers’ income “saw real spending only in the months around 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections”; in the interim, the government did not spend a single rupee on the scheme.

As for the NSSO’s SAS findings of 2018-19, the ministry presented the “total income” of farm households. Disaggregate data how, only 37 per cent was from “crop production” and the rest 62.8 per cent from “wages”, “leasing out of land”, “non-farm business” and “farming of animals”.

Compared with the SAS of 2012-13, income from “crop production” increased from Rs 3,081 in 2012-13 to Rs 3,798 in 2018-19, by 23.3 per cent or an annual average of 3.9 per cent. No further SAS has been carried out.

3. On April 4, 2025, a study led by former agriculture secretary Siraj Hussain, “Doubling Farmers' Income: A Promising Target fraught with Challenges” (IIC Policy Paper), concluded, “India has fallen short of the goal of DFI by 25 per cent. The increase in income from wages-salary and non-farm business suggests that the nonfarm sector has performed better in comparison to the farm sector in several states.”

It used the SAS of 2002-03, 2012-13 and 2018-18 and extrapolated the growth numbers from crop production to 2022-23 (average of 2.5 per cent annual rise in ‘real’ income).

4. On March 24, 2022, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture report was tabled in Parliament, by which farmers' income was to double. It said, between 2015-16 (SAS of 2012-13 extrapolated to 2015-16) and 2018-19, far from doubling farmers' income, some states (Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Nagaland etc.) saw “declining” income and yet the ministry remained “a mute spectator”. It described the ministry’s attitude as “lackadaisical” and panned it for not having relevant information about states where farm income was falling.

Why Chand’s estimates are misleading

Chand uses GDP numbers to estimate farmers' income, which no economist does or has done.

When asked about his novel approach, R Ramakumar, an agricultural economist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), said, “No. It's his own method. Economists usually calculate income data using survey figures.”

He is referring to the NSSO’s SAS, the last of which was held for 2018-19.

Sardara Singh Johl, an agricultural economist and former chancellor of the Punjab Central University (2012-2020), dismissed Chand’s claim, saying, “I don’t think it is reliable”.

Also read: In relief for TN farmers, Centre likely to ease paddy moisture cap

Chand used a ‘nominal' value of “OS/MI” or operating surplus/mixed income, under the head “Agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing” in the NSO’s data on GDP to estimate farmers' income to have increased by 108 per cent during FY16 and FY23. The NSO doesn’t release this data at constant prices (inflation-indexed).

He didn’t disclose how he arrived at this number (108 per cent increase). He justified not segregating the share of corporate and public sector from the OS/MI data, saying that those accounted "for a tiny share of the income of agriculture”.

Given that Chand presented a table showing the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of various items under the agriculture and allied activities for FY15-FY24, one would assume that he used the same CAGR for estimating 108 per cent growth during FY16-FY23 too.

But no, his own estimate for OS/MI for FY15-FY24 is 10.1 per cent. The CAGR for OS/MI for FY16-FY23 (the doubling period) works out to 10.8 per cent. Neither number led to a 108 per cent increase in the seven fiscals of FY16-FY23.

Did he add up Rs 6,000 cash handouts to farmers every year since FY19 to arrive at his number? That is not known because he didn’t even mention the scheme or the sum. Using this handout would present a misleading picture. What happens when the cash handout is stopped? Farmers' income will be less palatable.

Also read: Falling yields, rising oil imports crush Anantapur’s groundnut farmers

It is also not clear why Chand waited until October 10, 2025. The GDP numbers he used were released on February 29, 2024. It takes a minute to calculate the CAGR from the given numbers.

It is also strange that neither the ministry nor Gulati is aware of Chand’s claims, given that both follow the subject very closely. It is also surprising that the Centre let such a big achievement pass without the usual song and dance.

What Chand ignores

The use of GDP numbers is in itself a big red flag.

Arvind Subramanian, who was the chief economic advisor (2014-2018) when the new GDP series of 2011-12 was introduced, first claimed in 2019 that the GDP growth was overestimated by 2.5 to 3.7 percentage points every fiscal year of FY12- FY17. It essentially means the GDP numbers are highly exaggerated.

Subramanian did so by comparing the GDP numbers with 17 high-frequency indicators because even he didn’t have access to the data sets used by the NSA (a first in Indian history).

Since then, he has kept questioning the GDP data, the last time was in a December 19, 2025, interview in which he said ‘real’ growth averages around three per cent in the past decade, half of six per cent the official numbers show.

Many economists, including Arun Kumar and Ashoka Mody, have also said the same about GDP numbers. In March 2019, 108 economists and social scientists from all over the world had written an open letter to register their protest against GDP data manipulations.

More recently, the International Monetary Fund’s November 26, 2025, report put the NSA data, which includes GDP numbers, in grade ‘C’ — one above the lowest category — red flagging its methodology, quality, coverage, volume of data collected and rates and ratios used for calculations.

Chand also seems unaware that the agriculture GVA data have been questioned for exaggeration.

On September 19, 2023, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman sought “real-time estimation” of yields of rice, wheat, pulses etc. at an official function, stressing that “the country suffers for want of” reliable estimates.

A few days later, on September 25, 2023, Food and Public Distribution Secretary Sanjeev Chopra acknowledged a “mismatch” between production and trade figures for wheat and assured that “in the next one or two years” the government would ensure the estimates are “driven by the ground reality”.