How to bring farmers into the main economy?

India has been creating one billionaire every month since 2010, wrote Kenneth Rapoza. The number of billionaires on Forbes' list rose to 101 from 84 last year. "It's record number historically (and) it means every 33 days brought a new Indian billionaire to the list last year," said Fakhri Ahmadov. "We have always imagined Indian private capital to be in the hands of 'old wealth' rather than self made entrepreneurs, but self made account for around 65% of the wealth of billionaires and it has been stabilized at this ratio since 2010." With so much new wealth being created surely the economy must be roaring ahead. Not so. Growth has declined every quarter of the last financial year, falling to 6.1% in the last quarter, which is being blamed on demonetization on November 8. The reason why it was 7% in the December quarter could be because people were buying goods in bulk to get rid of their old notes which is why private consumption spiked at 11% in that quarter. Any growth is due to government spending and private consumption. As per the 'trickle down theory' if you create enough wealth at the top some of it will trickle down to those at the bottom, so why is growth falling off. Because a large chunk of our citizens are missing out on the growth. Farmers, who grow our food, are suffering. Ironically, this is because of bumper crops due to a good monsoon last year. How many farmers do we have? The total of cultivators and agricultural laborers comes to around 263 million, or 22% of the population. If we add their families then about half the population is probably dependent on agriculture. Bumper harvests of certain crops, combined with the effects of demonetization, has resulted in the steep drop in farm prices, so that farmers are unable to recover their costs. Spending behavior of our farmers is very strange. They spend on flashy gadgets or ornaments when they have money but are close to starvation if the weather does not cooperate. Farmers are agitating for their loans to be written off, which may cost the government a total of Rs 2.57 trillion in the next 2 years. Young people in rural areas do not want to be farmers. Plot sizes have become progressively smaller as land has been divided among children. If the government increases the Minimum Support Price food prices will rise, increasing retail inflation and prompting the RBI to tighten monetary policy. The government wants interest rate to be reduced so that new jobs can be created. If there are no jobs for educated people how will farm workers get jobs outside agriculture unless they are taught skills demanded by industry. Seems no way out of the trap.