It’s only a minority of Indian farmers protesting
THE column from The Conversation, “No incentive to plant climate-resilient crops” (the POST February 17-21), refers.
Is it not interesting that farmers have been protesting in Germany as well, but nobody is talking about it, not even the Twitter user, Rihanna?
Yet in the case of India, every Jill or Johnny come lately wants to have a say.
The writers, Shruti Bhogal and Shreya Sinha, claim that in India it is a “historic mass mobilisation of farmers against three new farm laws”. It is neither historic nor a mass mobilisation by Indian standards. They have no knowledge of history.
They wish to create the impression that farmers in general are protesting against these reforms.
A minority of farmers are protesting against the farm laws because they don’t want an end to the system that has benefited them unfairly for so long.
In an opinion piece, Surjit Bhalla Bhalla, an economist and the executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, pointed out that the current farm produce laws, drawn up by the agricultural produce marketing committee (APMC), came into effect 150 years ago.
This was to “feed the colonial masters raw cotton for their Manchester mills.
The output of these mills was then sold to the ‘natives’ for a hefty profit. The farmer was obligated, required, forced to sell to the masters in a regulated market whose regulation was set by, you guessed it, the colonial masters”.
Those against the reformed laws were, in their ignorance, fighting for the perpetuation of colonial rule, said Bhalla.
There are 100 million farmers in India. There are two million in Punjab and Haryana.
Protesting farmers from Punjab and Haryana are no more than 200 000. So those who say farmers protest in India are wrong.
Farmers in the rest of India are waiting for the newly reformed laws to come into effect because they allow the farmer to sell through the APMC, and to sell outside the APMC. So the laws are necessary.
Bhalla says: “The corrosive monopoly power held by the APMCs has
been recognised by almost all political parties and farmer unions (for example, the Bharatiya Kisan Union took out a protest in 2008 arguing for the right of farmers to sell produce to corporates).
The Congress party had these very same laws in its 2019 election manifesto.”
But now, Rahul Gandhi, a member of the National Indian Congress, is encouraging the protests.
He even went to Puducherry in the south and spoke to the fishing community about the farmers' protests because he considered them to be farmers of the sea, hoping presumably that they would join the farmers of Punjab.
And paddy and wheat farmers are destroying their own land.
They are failing to practise crop diversification, burning 100 million tons of crop stubble annually.
This leads to the increased use of chemical fertilisers and they are lowering the water table by excessive use of tube well irrigation since these comparatively rich farmers get free electricity for their pumps, are all part of the story.
They maim and kill millions of people by such environmentally destructive practices.
But they are supported by ignorant celebrities like the half-naked Rihanna and clueless activists like Greta Thunberg and her flunky Disha Ravi.
Why are Greta and Rihanna not supporting the German farmers?
SANU SINGH Reservoir Hills