Farmers Bill in India and Farmer Protest Against Modi Government

“Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” This is a very popular slogan. You must have heard it multiple times

but how much do we actually value our farmers and our soldiers?


You can guess this by the fact that very few of you would already be aware of what I’m going to write about it today

I’m sure that most of you would have no idea about the topic I’m going to talk about today

But it isn’t really your fault- our media deliberately hides such issues under the carpet Recently,

the government has come up with three ordinances related to agriculture

which has infuriated the farmers of the nation

Especially the farmers of Punjab and Haryana are out on the streets to protest against these ordinances

Why are they protesting?

What changes are suggested by these ordinances and why does it concern all of us/the common man?


Come, let us find out about all of his in THIS BLOG

The Bhartiya Kisan Union and other farmer organisations sought permission from the Haryana government

for a protest rally On the 10th of September,

the BJP-led state government denied them permission in view of the coronavirus pandemic

and that a protest during this time would not be right

But the farmers did not pay heed to the government and a rally was organized

in which more than 100 farmers rode their tractors to the site of protest

and hence some called it the “tractor protest” because farmers were protesting with tractors

and were raising slogans of “Save the farmers, save the Mandis”

The situation turned violent in some places and it is alleged that the farmers were lathi-charged by the police.

But why are there demands to save the mandi in the slogans of “Save the farmers, save the Mandis”?

Let us first understand that?

We will have to go back in history for a bit- When the country got independence,

the whole distribution system of the agricultural sector was dominated by the

moneylenders and traders in the villages

The farmers had no means to sell their produce directly in the markets

They were dependent on moneylenders and traders that in turn exploited the farmers So,

the farmers were perpetually in debt and had to face a lot of problems- which was not a great system


The government came up with a way to solve this problem APMC Agriculture Produce Market Committee

The government set up special areas in the State and declared them as market areas

These market areas would be subject to the jurisdiction of the market committees

No farmer or trader would be able to sell or buy produce freely in a market area

If a trader has to procure products from the farmers in a market area, then they would require a license to do so


By this licensing system, the government controlled these traders to some extent

The government also claimed that the farmers would be granted Minimum Support Price in these markets

that is, a minimum price at which the farmers would be able to sell their produce to safeguard them from exploitation


APMC is a huge reason why India’s green revolution in the 1960s was a massive success

APMC means Agriculture Produce Market Committee There is an Act regarding it and basically,

in 1965 the government made a committee and that committee decided that Mandis…

You might recall that this was the time when the Green revolution had started So,

around that time a network of regulated Mandis was established and they were called APMC Mandis

The farmers used to bring their product to these Mandis and

then first the private trade can come and buy it and

if no buyer buys more than that after the private trade has procured some of the produce,

then the government would step in to procure at what is called the Minimum support price

This basically meant that MSP was an incentive for the farmers to remain in cultivation

The government also stated that if some produce was left with the farmers,

then the government would itself procure that if the traders are unable to do so

This was a great deal for the farmers These market areas were regulated under the State APMC Act

Agriculture Produce Market Committee Act

When the recently protesting farmers say “save the Mandis”,

by Mandis, they mean the APMC- these market areas under it -So,

basically, you could say that APMC was like a regulated mandi –


They were not “like” regulated Mandis,

they were exactly that This structure was put in place because the green revolution areas-

Punjab, Haryana, Western UP, and later it expanded to other areas in the country


But in Punjab and Haryana an impressive network of Mandis developed and

you know that the Green revolution has happened But over the years, some flaws of the APMC surfaced


The market committee had extraordinary powers to grant licenses to the traders

A “License raj” developed in one sense

The second flaw was that the licensed commission agents that procured produce from the farmers started forming cartels and

formulating deals with one another to collectively not buy produce from the farmers at a specified rate and

so the farmers would be left with no option -Over the years,


there developed various flaws in the APMC mandi system.

There was cartelization, mafias sprung up in some places and then

there are market areas of APMC wherein the farmers have to sell their produce….

You know, all these kinds of things were there Now,

let us talk about the ordinances brought in by the Modi government

They have claimed that these ordinances would create “one nation, one market”

and give farmers the freedom of choice- they can sell their produce wherever they wish to -We have to understand two things here:


Seen broadly, until now,

only 6% of the farmers in the entire country get MSP and MSP would only be given

if they sell in the regulated APMC Mandis 94% of the farmers are in any case,

dependent on the markets The data that I am sharing with you is that of NSSO Another report of NSSO tells us that even in 2012-13,


when they surveyed the Mandis,

they found that majority of the produce was being sold to the private trade outside the Mandis

It was not like the Mandis had a great hold

But I am focussing on the points that are making the farmers angry

These ordinances state that the areas outside these APMCs will have no taxes on sale or purchase

The farmers allege that if the government make sale and purchase outside the Mandis more attractive, due to the absence of taxes,

Then this would pose a huge disadvantage for the farmers

because everything in the APMC Mandis is regulated Transactions are taken into account

There is also a Minimum Support Price but no MSP exists outside these Mandis

There is no Minimum Support Price for the farmers

There is no one to regulate anything and to ensure that the farmers are treated fairly and are not exploited

-I believe that actually, it is one country, two markets Because the government has not touched MSP and APMC,

but there is a provision that if the traders buy inside APMC,

then they will have to pay the mandi tax But if the private companies buy outside the Mandis,

then they would not have to pay taxes So,

the traders and the companies would want to buy products outside, without payment of taxes and gradually,

people will move out of the Mandis and this will cause the Mandis to start becoming redundant

When the mandi system collapses, then obviously, the MSP that was assured to the farmers would also decline gradually

The protesting farmers believe that these ordinances would “corporatize ” the agricultural sector of India

where big companies would be able to establish their monopolies over the agricultural sector of India

and it would become easier to exploit the farmers A good,

a recent example of this would be when Pepsi sued some farmers in court in Gujarat

Most of the farmers in the country do not have the requisite knowledge to understand lengthy contracts made by the multinational companies

and fight legal battles with them

Most experts also say that the government is fooling people

by claiming that these ordinances would impart freedom of choice because this freedom already exists with the farmers


They can sell their produce wherever they wish to -It is being said that with this system of “one country, one market ”

would allow the farmers to sell anywhere and he would be given a higher price

But the whole question is that if 86% of farmers of India are not able to go from one district to another to sell their produce,

How are we expecting them to travel from Chandigarh to Bangalore or from Bangalore to Chattisgarh to sell their produce?

That is not possible!


this whole issue is broadly about free markets vs regulated markets And this issue exists not only in India

but in many developed countries as well due to which,

you will be surprised to know,

farmer suicides are on the rise even in developed countries like France and America

and these countries are undergoing an agricultural crisis

Because even in these countries, major multinational companies have captured a monopoly and are exploiting the farmers.

The small farmers are the worst-hit -Another point is that the rich and

developed countries like England, America and those in Europe

from where we are copying the model in India, the model has failed in all these countries Since the 1960s,

the farmer’s income in America has witnessed a steep decline

in fact, American agriculture and European agriculture is surviving on the agricultural subsidies which the governments provide

I think we must understand that if the model did not work out there,

how will it succeed in a country like India?

Neoliberalism is an ideology that believes in free markets

This ideology is most seen in the USA and free markets basically refer to a situation

where the government does not interfere and lets businesses operate the way they want to – which sounds good superficially,

but if the market is left free for the businesses to earn profit as they wish to then overall,

this will not be good for society and the world because if businesses and big companies operate without the regulation of the government,


then they will always think about their profits and if they are only focussed upon the profits,

who is going to look after the environment? It is going to get destroyed-

which is actually happening all across the world today

I must give you an example,

a farmer from the USA wrote to me on Twitter, when I was discussing with him The farmer said that

the corn that the price that he got for the corn that he sold in 2018 somewhere around 3.24 per bushel,

he claims that this is less than what his father got by selling his corn in 1972 Those who oppose neoliberalism say that

the government should make regulations in some sectors Strong regulations like Minimum Support Price for farmers

there should be an upper limit on the price of medicines to prevent companies

from selling such items to consumers at the prices that they wish to sell for


There should be some sectors that should not be profit-driven,

rather they should be welfare driven -True independence for farmers would assure MSP both within and outside Mandis MSP should be made legal.


Another thing is that Like I said previously, we deliberately kept agriculture impoverished to build it up

There is an RBI(Reserve Bank of India) report between 2011-12 and 2017-18 that 0.4% of the GDP was being invested in agriculture

In a sector where 50% of the population or 60 crore people are involved,

only 0.4% of the GDP is being invested There is no doubt that there are shortcomings in the APMC

But if we improve the APMC by building it up and removing its shortcomings and lay a network of 42,000 Mandis in India,

and if we are able to provide farmers with an assured income,

that’s the only way forward Thirdly,

if we want to bring people out of villages into the cities, there was a statement of the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India

the biggest reform would be when we take the farmers out of agriculture into the cities because

there is a need for cheap labour in the cities If this is our thought process and this is our economic design the reason

for the crisis that we see in both India and worldwide is right in front of us


The reverse migration that has happened should have taught us a lesson Like I say,

the people that had come out of the cities from the villages basically were agricultural refugees

They were agricultural refugees but we were not able to understand that because the visual was not in front of us

Now we have seen the people going back and the conditions that they have gone back in Now,

probably there is a visual in front of the people the population that I talked about when I spoke of agricultural refugees

So should we still adhere to the model of taking people out of the villages into the cities?

Why should we not reverse this economic design?

farmers have 4 main demands

firstly,

a rollback of all three ordinances,

secondly

the mandi system {i.e. state government-regulated APMC mandis} to remain in place,

thirdly,

their loans are cleared,

a law should be made for MSP to be at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production

TO BE CONTINUED …