PM holds talks in effort to break deadlock as farmers fear impact of new laws
INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi held virtual talks with farmers and asked them to explain how the government’s agricultural policies had benefited them – a month into massive protests that have rattled his administration.
The talks with supporters of his legislation came as his government makes multiple efforts to placate tens of thousands of farmers blocking key roads on the outskirts of the capital in protest against new agricultural laws.
Protesting farmers say the laws will dismantle regulated markets, favour big corporations, and make family-owned farms unviable, eventually leaving them landless.
They fear the government will stop buying grain at minimum guaranteed prices and corporations will then push down prices.
The government says the three laws approved by parliament in September will enable farmers to market their produce and boost production through private investment.
“Through these agricultural reforms, we have given better options to the farmers,” Mr Modi said in his live address.
He reiterated that the laws were a much-needed reform that would benefit farmers, and accused opposition parties of spreading fears of exploitation by corporations.
“Those making big speeches today did nothing for farmers when they were in power,” Mr Modi said.
The farmers present during Mr Modi’s talks were from six states but not from Punjab and Haryana, two of India’s largest agricultural states whose farmers were the first to rise up against his government and have hunkered down outside New Delhi in trucks, trailers and tractors.
Mr Modi’s outreach came a day after India’s main
opposition party called for a special parliamentary session to withdraw the new laws.
“The prime minister wants to help two, three business people” by introducing the farm laws, said Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader from the opposition Congress party, on Thursday.
He led a party delegation to President Ram Nath Kovind, seeking his intervention for repeal of the laws.
Six rounds of talks between government officials and farming union leaders have failed to resolve the deadlock.
On Thursday, the government again invited protesting farmers to further talks.
Mr Modi’s government has said it is willing to pledge that guaranteed prices will continue but protest leaders have rejected an offer to amend some contentious provisions of the laws.
Farming union leaders have also accused the government of trying to weaken and discredit them by describing protesting farmers as “anti-nationals”.
The laws have exacerbated existing resentment from farmers, who often complain of being ignored by the government.
India’s farmers have long been seen as the heart and soul of a country where nearly 60 per
cent of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods. But farmers’ economic clout has diminished over the past three decades.
Once accounting for a third of India’s gross domestic product, they now account for only 15% of the country’s £2.1 trillion economy.
And, while wages in the sector have been increasing in recent years – they jumped by more than 10% last year – so has inflation.
According to the BBC, World Bank data shows that consumer price inflation grew from just under 2.5% in 2017 to nearly 7.7% in 2019.
This has eaten into wage gains and fuelled discontent.
Agricultural policy expert Devinder Sharma has said that farmers’ incomes have, in real terms, remained stagnant or even declined for several decades.
“An increase of a couple of thousand [rupees] a month doesn’t make much difference if we account for inflation,” he told the BBC. The broadcaster also reported that a survey, carried out in 2016 by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, found the average amount of debt farmers were liable for had more than doubled.