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In recent days, tens of thousands of protesters have arrived in the capital of the world’s fifth-largest economy as part of a political struggle that directly affects the livelihoods of more than 600 million people.
This drama is unfolding in India, where a series of reforms to decades-old farm laws has triggered a major political crisis. Farmers arriving from the granary regions of the country have blocked roads and set up camps in New Delhi to demand that the government remove the new laws. Yesterday they called a national strike.
In a country where nearly 60 percent of the population of 1.4 billion people depend on agriculture for a living, this is a problem with huge repercussions for the country’s popular Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
What’s the backstory? Under a system established by the socialist-leaning governments that came to power during the first decades of India’s independence, farmers have long been forced to sell their crops to state warehouses, which guarantee a fixed minimum price in return. To make the system more efficient and market-driven by ensuring that supply responds directly to actual demand, the government recently passed laws that allow farmers to sell to whoever they want.
Allowing farmers a greater choice of buyers may seem attractive, and supporters of the new laws say they will attract more and better investment in the sector. But many farmer groups are angry. They say that they were not consulted enough about the law and, more importantly, that without the guarantee of government purchases and prices, they will be at the mercy of large agricultural companies that can force prices to lower to levels that make it impossible. earn a living.
It is a classic case of market-oriented reforms that offer the promise of greater prosperity and efficiency on a broad level, while increasing people’s fears about their own economic security and future.
By context, more than 80 per cent of farmers in India are small plot farmers who earn a very modest living. And droughts, floods and a lack of investment were making their lives more difficult even before the coronavirus pandemic hit the economy: Last year, some 10,000 Indian farmers committed suicide.
So far, talks between the government and farmers’ groups have gone nowhere. The government says it is willing to revise the laws, but farmers insist on eliminating them entirely and starting from scratch.
Prime Minister Modi has to be careful. This is the politics of the heart and, unlike the protests against the citizenship law last year, farmers’ complaints are harder to ignore or quell on nationalist or sectarian grounds for the hard-line Hindus of the BJP, the party ruler of India.
Modi, of course, has recovered from many reform mistakes. Its decision to squeeze the black markets by abruptly removing most of the paper money from circulation in 2017 caused widespread confusion and produced few benefits. His historic attempt to rationalize the national tax system ended up more fragmented than promised. His moves on citizenship laws and massive short-term coronavirus lockdowns earlier this year seemed politically dangerous at the time. Yet he and his government remain widely popular: Modi’s approval rating is above 70 percent.
Will a massive protest by the people who feed India hurt Modi more than these other misadventures? Those tractors parked in New Delhi don’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.
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