The Fight Against Farm Laws - A to Z in short.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the repeal of the three contentious farm laws, which had witnessed protests from farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, on the borders of Delhi for more than a year. What are farm laws? Why were farmers protesting against them for the last one year? Why now did government withdrew it? How did farmers won against entire system? In this blog we'll address all such questions.

Let us first understand those three farm laws. For that we would need understand a bit of how Indian System of Agriculture works. When India got its independence, the whole distribution system of agricultural sector was dominated by money-lenders and traders. The farmers had no means to directly sell their goods in the market. They were dependent on these traders and money-lenders who in turn only exploited them. This was clearly a system where the public enjoyed goods in cheaper prices, traders benefitted from heavy profits.. But, sacrifing the welfare of the farmers and not giving them enough sum for their crops.

The Govt came up with a way to solve this problem. The solution was "APMCs" - Agricultural Produce Market Committee. The govt set up special areas in the states and declared them as market areas. These market areas would directly report every motion in the market to the market committee. In this way the govt caught the hold of the market and regulated its trades. If a trader wants to buy goods from the farmers, then they would need a trade license. The govt also claimed that the farmers would be granted "MSPs" or Minimum Support Price for their goods in these areas, that is, a guaranteed minimum price for the goods of the farmers, which the traders are ought to pay if they want to buy from farmers. Note that many experts believe that APMCs were a huge reason behind 1960s Green Revolution.

Now, let us discuss the main matter, which are the three farm laws which Modi Govt had passed in 2020. What are these laws which made farmers angry?

These laws state that the areas outside the APMC markets will have no taxes on sales or purchase. The farmers allege that if the govt makes the sales or purchases outside the APMCs look more attractive, due to the absence of the taxes, then this would pose a huge disadvantage for the farmers because everything inside the APMCs was regulated, transactions are taken into account and there was even a Minimum Support Price for farmers. But outside the APMCs there's no MSP and there's no one to regulate if the trade is being done fairly or not. The private companies and traders would prefer to buy goods outside the APMC markets to avoid taxes and regulations. This would eventually make the markets dead. Therefore, the protesting farmers believe that these farm laws will "corporatize" the agricultural sector of India, where big companies would be able to establish their monopolies in the agricultural sector.

Many experts say that the govt is fooling the farmers by giving them "free choice" to sell their goods anywhere. In reality, this freedom already existed. The farmers who were literate enough to directly negotiate with traders were already trading outside the APMCs. These APMCs were built for the ones who were getting exploited by the traders. The govt had claimed that "One Nation, One Market" would allow farmers to sell their goods anywhere in this country and they would get higher prices too, but data says that more than 86% of the Indian farmers aren't even able to sell their goods in their nearby district. How are we expecting them to sell Gujarat's groundnuts to UP and Kerela's coconuts to Bengal? Only big companies can do this. 

This issue can be broadly termed as an issue between Govt Free Markets VS Govt Regulated Markets. Not only in India, but in France and European countries too we see struggle between these issues. In all the rich and developed countries like England, America and Euporean countries, from where we copied our model for India, the model has already failed to liberate farmers. Since 1960s American Agriculture Income has seen a steep decline. In fact, American and European agriculture survives solely on the Agricultural Subsidies which the govt provides.

On 20th Sept 2020, the farm laws were passed in the Rajya Sabha. You can check out the clips of that incident, how the bills were passed in a very unjust and undemocratic way, where the opposition did not get any chance to speak against the bill. At the end, both, democracy and farmers were robbed off of their rights. This deep and complex issue was to give our farmers a one year long fight against the govt. Since Modi announced the repeal of farm laws, many celebrated it as a huge victory of democracy. But in the corner were those news channels, which from the past entire year were desperately trying to prove how these farm laws are a masterstroke by Modi Govt and how all the farmers who are protesting are Anti-National. Now, those same news channels are showing how withdrawing these farm laws is a masterstroke!

Well, what pains our farmers went through this year. In a healthy democracy, whenever any protest happens, the media usually questions the govt and its potential mistakes. But in India, our media usually questions the protesters themselves, going so far even by telling them "Khalistanis" and "Anti-Nationals". Talking of the farmers protests, this one was a very historic one, very unusual. More than 400 farmer organizations united to fight against the farm laws. Initially the farmers from Haryana, Punjab, MP etc protested in their respective states, but when govt and media both paid no heed to them, they decided to march to Delhi. The governmemt tried its utmost to stop this march. They set up barricades, made use of water canons, tear gas and in some places literally dug up the highways so that the farmers, who were obviously marching on foot, could not march. In one point of time the govt had even stopped the access of drinking water and toilet to the two main protest sites at the Delhi border - Singhu border and Ghazipur border.

The Farmer's Movement was the first movement in the country where the farmers not only had to collide with the governmemt for their rights but had to protect their image from baseless online trolls and media who were constantly defaming the farmers online. All the movements before this in our country, whether Nirbhaya Protest or Anti-Corruption Protest, the media had more or less either favoured the protesters or atleast had presented the case in a neutral manner. This seemed to be the first such movement where the media was trying its best to discredit the farmers. But the farmers remaimed in their resolve as firm as a mountain. They uncessantly fought and spread their movement nationwide. Farmers protest sites even had libraries which had books on revolution and ideas of Bhagat Singh etc. To counter the fake news by media, the farmers even started printing their own newspaper called Trolley Times, a 4-paged biweekly. They even came online as "Kisan Ekta Morcha" in every social media sites.

In this struggle more than 600 farmers are believed to have died protesting, attaining immortality.

Still, after the repeal of the farm laws, the farmers haven't stopped their battle. They want guaranteed MSP for which they could get legal support. What happens is that when farmers harvest their crops, they need to sell their crops as soon as possible. It is because farmers, unlike huge companies, does not have godowns, cold-storages etc etc to store their crops and protect them from insects and bacterial infection. This is where the traders exploit them. The farmers, with no MSP whatsoever, are forced to sell their crops at extremely cheap prices. Traders and companies thereby openly blackmail farmers to sell their crops at almost negligible price.

Believe me, this MSP business too is very deep and complex.

Now you may think, if farmers are so weak in legal matters and corporate stuff, how did they make this movement against the entire government a success? It was because of some great farm leaders like Rakesh Tikait, Dr. Darshan Pal etc and the thousands of sons and daughters, the youths of the land-ploughing illiterate farmers, who led this protest.

Thus in this blog we went into some technical terms of farming and agricultural sector and also derived some knowledge on how excellently the farmers movement became a success.

This is the true meaning of democracy isn't it? We should never forget that India's birth itself was a massive revolt, massive ANDOLAN against the britishers. This country's citizens must never forget its ways to demand their rights - to protest for truth and welfare. When there'll be none to protest, none to question and none to struggle for truth, know for certain that India's soul has died. 

Thanks,

Daksh Parekh.