EXPLAINED: WHY ARE INDIAN FARMERS PROTESTING?
What are the three farm laws and why are they so controversial?
The Indian government passed three laws last year aimed at modernising agriculture, which employs 40 per cent of India’s workforce. The sector also supports the country’s more than 140 million farming households. The three laws are: the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce ( Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers ( Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and the Essential Commodities ( Amendment) Act, 2020. Under the newrules, farmers can bypass government- controlled local markets ( mandis) and sell their produce directly to private buyers. But owners of small farms fear this will leave them unable to compete with larger farms backed by corporate entities that can severely undercut them on prices while private companies could become exploitative. The newlaws also decriminalize hoarding, prompting fears that large private corporations and middlemen could take advantage of this to dominate the market. Farmers also fear that the creation of private mandis along with the state- run Agriculture Produce Market Committees ( APMC) will push all agriculture businesses towards private markets – paving theway for big traders and corporate giants to procure farm produce at throwaway prices. There’s also skepticism that despite the promise of uniform taxation for public and private markets, governments would deliberately delay procurement as in case of paddy and turn public markets redundant.
Most worrying to the farming community is what they see as a threat to the long- standing system of minimum support price ( MSP) – a governmentguaranteed procurement scheme introduced in 1965. This scheme, a linchpin to India’s Green Revolution which took India’s agricultural output from scarcity to surplus, is essentially a safety net insulating farmers from price fluctuations and providing guaranteed markets. The government has assured farmers of written assurance for the continuation of the existing MSP system, but has ruled out repealing any provision of the newlaws.
Who all are in the new committee to review the farm laws?
India’s Supreme Court yesterday decided to set up a fourmember committee to resolve the deadlock over the newfarm laws between the government and protesting farmers’ unions.
The members of the committee will look into the farmers’ grievances on the issue, the court said. The four members are: Bhupinder Singh Mann, President of Bhartiya Kisan Union; Anil Ghanwat, President of Shetkeri Sangthana, Maharashtra; Pramod Kumar Joshi, director for South Asia, International Food Policy Research Institute, and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati.