Tens of thousands of Indian farmers have joined protests in New Delhi over three new bills that they say threaten their livelihoods.
In September, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi enacted three laws to reform India’s agricultural sector. One change was to allow farmers to sell crops directly to private firms, which government says will help them to make more profits. Farmers fear, however, that the main benefit will accrue to the country’s corporate sector.
Traditionally, farmers sell their produce at government-regulated wholesale markets (called Mandis) where they are assured a minimum price, or Minimum Support Price (MSP).
According to the News channel TRT World, protesters fear the new laws will leave them at the mercy of private buyers and vulnerable to exploitation that could dictate the market price and possibly erase minimum limits. Farmer Union ;eader Balwan Singh is quoted as saying that ‘the government is stealing from the common man to fill the treasury of a few corporations. All of the country’s laws are being written for the benefit of the corporations’.
Modi has blamed the farmers’ protest on ‘lies and conspiracy’ spread by opposition parties. However, according to Sanjay Ruparelia, associate professor of politics at Ryerson University, the government pushed the three bills through ‘essentially liberalising agriculture without any deliberation in parliament. The opposition requested that these bills go to the parliamentary committee for further scrutiny, the government disallowed it.’
Although the new laws allow farmers the option of going to a Mandi or to a private firm, the issue is quite complicated – farmers pay a tax to a Mandi which goes towards running the market, maintaining the roads between the Mandi and the village, and ensuring that their surplus crops will at least be bought, albeit at a minimum price. The new laws state farmers will not have to pay such a tax if they sell to corporations. The conditions stipulated by the new laws set up Corporations and Mandis as competitors, and farmers fear that after Mandis have gradually become redundant they will end up as individuals against giant corporations with almost no bargaining power and no way of selling surplus crops. The complexities of the issue are discussed in this video.
Farmers want the three laws repealed and the MSP written into law.
[Picture: Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay]