About the Article
This article is an effort to compile
all the known information that is known to us about “Farmers Protest”, without specific,
on point, 100% correct facts (more of a generalized and easy to understand
approach).
This article is divided into two sections for your convenience. If you feel like you don't need certain information, you can skip to the specific section by clicking the one you need.
Sections of the article are stated below;
Section 1 (Briefing): Origin and major story till 26 January
2021
Section 2 (Farm Laws): Brief Explanation of New Farm Laws and their benefits according to government.
Section 3 (Cause of Agitation): Highlights potential causes of agitation (opinion).
Section 4 (Potential Loopholes): Highlights loopholes of the Farm Laws (opinion) and the way they were passed.
Section 5 (Twitter Clashes, International Conspiracies & New Situations): Information surrounding tweets of Greta and international viewpoint acceptance by our celebrities.
Section 6 (Conclusion): Personal viewpoint about Protest and other possibilities that could have happened. (Recommended)
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Section 1 (Briefing)
For two to three months, the protests were regional,
within the state boundaries. I, being an enthusiast and active social media and
internet user, regularly kept an eye out for what was happening around. Yes, a
spark was lit. There was an increase in support from our regional artists and
influencers, was it because of an internal desire or mere sheep mentality, it
does not matter.
Oh yes, during this period, there was little to no
coverage, that too claiming the protests were “paid by the opposition” or “misled”,
by our ‘national media’.
3 months passed, and November arrived, and still no action or
hearing. Various farm unions unite and come up with an idea to march toward
the Capital of the nation, Delhi. This is when the moment escalated on social
media platforms, eventually reaching out to people of North Indian descent in
other nations.
I was amazed to see rapidly changing ground realities.
Keeping the gradually increasing winter aside, I noticed a huge bump in
supplies for protest. There was a well-managed system of supply of food stock
from villages and now, because of the increase in support over social media,
non-farming families who supported the cause came and contributed a number of
things as per their ability.
Now the ‘National Media’ enters the game. The people had
decided not to let any reporters of the major diplomatic media houses enter and
conduct their so-called “reporting” as they had a clear experience of their end
representations. Media from the beginning played ‘pro-government’ and kept labeling
farmers “misled”, “opposition funded”, and now, “Khalistani Terrorists” as
there was an increase in the number of “turban-wearing people from Punjab”.
Fast forward to 26th January 2021,
Republic Day of India. Due to regular disagreements in meetings and no
satisfying proposals from the central government (by the way they were not
demanding a ‘separate religious country declaration’), farmers along with farm
unions decided to conduct a tractor rally around Delhi, supposed to happen
peacefully on predefined routes, on 26 January. Considering rough statistics,
85-90% of the rally did happen in a peaceful way, on predefined routes. But, as
it’s said, one mistake is enough to diminish the rest of the good deeds.
Few groups of people under the command of certain leaders breached the defined routes causing violence in certain areas including clashes with the police force leaving hundreds injured on both sides. One prominent incident that happened was the chaos at Red Fort, resulting in controversial outcomes and sights, including the hoisting of the Kisan Morcha Flag (the protest flag) and Nishan Sahib (the Sikh community flag; NOT the flag of Khalistan) and the presence of unexpectedly less armed force than usual.
Section 2 (Farm Laws)
Following are the three laws (out of which one is an amendment):
1. The
Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020:
This Bill allows the farmers to sell their produce outside the
Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) regulated markets. The APMCs are
government-controlled marketing yards or mandis. So, the
farmers have more choice on who they want to sell.
The government's logic (according to economic expert Gurcharan
Das) is that the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) is an obsolete institution from an age of scarcity, meant to protect the farmer but
has now become his oppressor, a monopoly cartel fixing low prices for the
farmers' produce, forcing distress sales.
2.
The
Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm
Services Bill, 2020:
This Bill makes provisions for the setting up of a framework for
contract farming. The farmer and an ordained buyer can strike a deal before the
production happens.
According to PRS India, a "Standing Committee on Agriculture
(2018-19)" observed the APMC laws needed reforms as cartelization had
begun to crystallize due to a limited no. of traders in APMC mandis.
Therefore, the following law was passed in September 2020.
3.
The
Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill 2020:
The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and
Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020 allows intra-state and inter-state trade of
farmers’ produce beyond the physical premises of APMC markets. State
governments are prohibited from levying any market fee, cess, or levy outside
APMC areas.
What
are the benefits to farmers according to the government?
1. Defeat the monopoly cartel at the APMC mandi and sell the
produce anywhere to anyone.
2. Bypass the Essential Commodities Act and be free to store
inventory which was constrained so far by stocking limits of ESCA.
3. Free to make contracts and transfer risk to businessmen in deals
made over a crop even before yield is made or met. Any dispute resolution will only be done by the local SDM within 24-48 hrs.
Section 3 (Cause of Agitation)
Before sorting any group under the term “herd mentality”, we
have to consider that people are sitting there in large numbers, including people
from various social, academic, religious, and financial backgrounds.
According to me there is more than one reason.
- First, of course, loopholes in the farm laws about which I’ll be giving my view in a while.
- Large-scale ‘existing’ disagreements with the government.
- Some
mobilization, believe it or not, might be because of the spread of ‘extremely
shortened inferences’, in other words, misinformation. Like the one about
directly taking away land from farmers, inference from the concept of
contract farming.
Section 4 (Potential Loopholes)
I am neither a policymaker nor of the age of being one.
But I could definitely pick out some of the weak zones from the laws or agree
with some arguments presented by other people.
The Laws empower the sale of produce out of the APMC
mandis. Undoubtedly, I agree Mandi system was flawed (kinda like most other
departments and humans). In a state like Punjab, the concentration of these mandis
per unit area is sufficient but in eastern states, situations are not at all
same and, of course, do not cater to the needs of the farmers there. But this law
indirectly allows the establishment of private mandis, which may or may not buy the
produce at better than or at current MSP prices at some point in time.
Coming to the argument of MSP. MSP currently is being provided to a small number of farmers out of all the farmers in the country, particularly in the states of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. MSP is received from the APMC mandis only. Now, there is a potential fear in the minds of farmers and farm unions. If private mandis are established, they might provide better prices initially attracting more farmers (greed OP), and this might eventually force the government to shut down APMC mandis which might then be running in losses and thus deleting the pre-existing guarantee of MSP and pushing the private mandis to their profit-making intentions.
The laws were passed in an undemocratic way. Without clear
statistics, the speaker called for a voice vote in Parliament. Even after a request
from the opposition for a proper vote system, the Chairman went the other way
around. This led to a huge disagreement in Parliament and eventually suspension of
major opposition leaders in Parliament. The day the laws were being passed; the
opposition leaders were protesting outside the Parliament.
The next argument can be understood using the simple ‘supply
and demand’ concept of economics. The law allows the stocking of food grains. Other
words: hoarding of food grains (sounds familiar, no? Indian history example).
This has the potential of leading to a shortage of food for the masses and price
hikes, making food a luxury for some people. Additionally, doubling the price of
food, in comparison to last year, due to stocking is no longer a crime. You’re
smart, do the math for a few years.
The last major argument according to me is the dispute resolution
mechanism. In a democracy, citizens have a right to go to the judiciary for any
kind of dispute resolution, and even there, one can approach the higher courts
if not satisfied with the judgment of lower courts. Congratulations, that
right is not for you if you’re a farmer according to new laws. Dispute
resolution will now be done by the Sub District Magistrate of the region within
24-48 hours. Sounds convenient and easy on paper, but in practice, insurance of
clean investigation and unbiased judgment from an executive officer is not
guaranteed. Secondly, it is a matter of trade and commerce and it should be
under consumer courts.
There are many other loopholes pointed out by various farm unions but including all of them is not possible in this article.
Section 5 (Twitter clashes, International Conspiracies & New Situations)
Not referencing the entire Diljit-Kangna twitter bash,
you might have already enjoyed that show. Rihanna’s tweet is also not much of a
concern but the toolkit of Greta is concerning. Let’s be clear, the movement is
‘of farmers’, for ‘farm bills revocation’, but the toolkit which Greta shared had
some points related to Sikh community oppression since 1984, how does that even
concern farmer protest? Several videos have emerged from foreign countries in
which people can be seen talking about a concept dead years ago, Khalistan. How
does that concern farmers from all around the country? Even if we agree that the farmer movement originated from Punjab, it does not mean that people here in
India want a separate nation. Nobody asked for that here.
I agree that tweets from icons like Sachin Tendulkar
telling people that it is an “internal matter” and foreigners are “not invited”
for view discussion is unjustified. Where was this intellect when our Prime
Minister tweets about matters at the US capitol or campaigns for “Abb ki Baar Trump
Sarkaar”?
Viewpoints and discussions did not emerge in the past 6 months but now the situation has actually changed quite a bit. Now due to attacks on human rights, a new set of questions and disagreements have emerged. The Center government installed thick barricades and spikes around the protest sites, blocking the supply of basic necessities such as food, water, medicine, and sanitation facilities. Alongside, there was an internet ban for a few days with an argument of curtailing the spread of false information (ban Internet to IT cells by the way). There were various videos coming up after the 26 January incident in which many protesting people, including women, can be seen being beaten despite being peaceful. One such video is down below (GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING);
Section 6 (Conclusion)
Considering the already existing Farm system, yes reforms
are needed. Undoubtedly, these laws were a blessing for some farmers around the
country in certain regions where the situation couldn’t have been worse. But
let’s just admit, the matter has escalated way too much than required. Both sides are having arrogant approaches to the situation.
The laws also have certain beneficial points which can be
found with deep reading if you really want to. But we should actually worry
about where the matters are going. The movement was for farm laws, but things
are going beyond that. Human rights violations from the government side are
unjust and so the use of farmer protest for pushing forward other demands.
I believe instead of such immediate changes in farm laws, the government could have worked on the existing system and infrastructure. We have
various other matters of concern in farming other than it being privatized. A large number of farmer suicides are a major concern and so is degrading soil
health. Even under the control of the government, many people sleep with empty
bellies.
But eventually, we have to agree to the fact that: Flawed nations have flawed leaders elected by flawed people who enact flawed laws leading to flawed movements.
