Some of India’s farmers are among the poorest people in the country, but government policies have long protected them from the ravages of open market prices.
That is changing.
A set of three laws passed in September aim to deregulate India’s huge agricultural sector. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said they will “liberate” farmers from the tyranny of middlemen.
But many farmers fear they will lose more than they could gain from the new regulations and that the main beneficiaries will be agricultural corporations with enormous financial power.
As a result, farmers have taken to the streets in the largest protests of its kind in years.
The demonstrations escalated last week as several thousand protesters from the northern states of Punjab and Haryana prepared to converge on the capital, New Delhi. The police blocked them at the city borders and denied them permission to meet at a location of their choice.
So what do India’s new agricultural laws do?
First, they make it easier for farmers to bypass government-regulated markets (known locally as mandis) and sell their produce directly to private buyers.
Farmers protesting in India have encountered a heavy police presence in New Delhi. [File: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]
They can now contract with private companies, a practice known in India as contract farming, and sell across state lines.
The new regulations also allow traders to store food. This is a move away from anti-hoarding bans, which could make it easier for traders to take advantage of rising prices, such as during a pandemic. These practices constituted criminal offenses under the old rules.
Why is this all a problem?
Farmers have genuine concerns.
One of the most important is that the new rules remove many of your guarantees. More than 86 percent of the cultivated agricultural land in India is controlled by small farmers who own less than two hectares (five acres) of land each. They fear not having enough bargaining power to obtain the prices they need to have a decent standard of living when negotiating the sale of their products to larger companies.
“The government has left us at the mercy of the big corporations,” Rashpinder Singh, 27, a farmer from the state of Punjab, told Al Jazeera in September.
“It is absurd to believe that farmers who have small land holdings will have bargaining power over private actors.”
Can’t they take such disputes to court?
One of the new legal provisions says that to resolve disputes, farmers can seek a conciliation board, administrative officials at the district level or an appeal authority. In other words, these cases will not go to ordinary court.
But he said farmers can enter into contracts with buyers. Are you sure this will give them legal protection?
The new laws also do not make written contracts mandatory. So in the case of any violation of its terms, it can be very difficult for a farmer to prove that he has been wronged, giving him little recourse.
It also doesn’t help that, in general, there is a bit of a foul odor when doing business with large companies.
Farmers have seen the costs of things like fertilizers and seeds skyrocket over the years, as those farm inputs are mostly sold by the private sector.
Is there a minimum price at which farmers are guaranteed to be able to sell their products?
There is, for certain crops like rice and wheat.
Producers have been able to rely on the so-called minimum support price (MSP), the guaranteed price paid by the government for these crops.
Farmers say they fear losing key protections in recently passed legislation. [File: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]
But the new rules do not guarantee any minimum price for any product, and farmers fear that the existing MSP will be abolished at some point.
This would be a huge blow to the farmers who grow the food that are currently eligible for the MSP, many of whom are from Punjab and Haryana, the home states of a large proportion of the protesters on the roads.
So who else is affected by the rule changes?
Farmers are not the only people who feel like they are losing. In fact, the new rules have upset many other vested interests.
Under the old regulations, state governments earned a fee for all things sold through mandis.
As those sales drop, so do your state revenue.
Then there are the middlemen who pretty much control the mandis and can also be big losers if farmers bypass their doors to sell directly to customers.
The laws were passed in September. Why are farmers protesting now?
Because no one bothered to check with them before they passed by!
The protesting farmers say the new laws were passed without consulting the people who might be affected by them. [Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]
The ruling Bharatiya Janata party initially enforced the new laws when the coronavirus pandemic escalated in June, first as emergency ordinances. He then approved them in Parliament in September.
He did all of that without consulting the farmers. They initially responded with a month-long protest in their respective states. In Punjab, they blocked the passage of trains.
Some federal government ministers have finally tried to negotiate with farmers in recent weeks, but to no avail.
What has the government said?
Modi has dismissed the farmers’ fears as out of place and blamed opposition political parties for spreading false rumors about the fate of farmers under the new laws.
“New agricultural laws have been introduced for the benefit of farmers. We will see and experience the benefits of these new laws in the coming days, ”Modi said Monday.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Amit Shah, offered to allow them to enter the capital as long as they restricted their protests to a designated location. Farmers’ response: thank you, but no thank you.
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