On September 20 2021, Ministry of Agriculture officials declared that the Centre is planning to issue a Unique Farmer Identity (FID) to every farmer in the country similar to Aadhaar with which alone farmers would be able to access benefits from all the government schemes. This in itself is harmless. But on closer examination, it is found that this FID would be integrated with a larger database on Indian agriculture. Our worries begin from here. Under the proposed database plan called Agristack, the government would collect data from the farmers about their entire agricultural operation from the beginning to the end— including the data on the type of crops they grow, the kind of seeds they use, their other inputs, the irrigation facilities they have, their pesticide use, the soil conditions in their farm, the weather conditions in their area, the quantum of produce and the per acre yield of their crops, the overall cost of cultivation and the breakup cost per head and so. The government would also collect data on their credit requirements, indebtedness etc. In short, this is a massive data base on nearly 13 crore cultivators and 6.64 lakh villages in India. In a federal India, this Big Data on Indian agriculture in the hands of the Centre causes concern. Agriculture is under the State List in the Constitution. Why the Centre builds a massive THE RISING SUN database? What the Central government will do with this database? We get a shock when we learn from the Ministry of Agriculture officials that...