By keeping it pointed and apolitical, the farmers’ movement has got to be the scene stealer of the year
If there’s any civil movement that scored this year, it has got to be the farmers’ sustained campaign against the three farm Acts and their fierce commitment to protect their rights, refusing any sort of compromise. They shut out politicians, shunned activists, did not seek help from any quarter, blocked roads and camped at Delhi’s borders to be heard. And not only forced senior Union Ministers to engage with them but have their langar food. They made cogent arguments about how the new laws would weaken their kind in the wake of the corporatisation implicit in them. They carefully avoided any politicisation of their cause or hijacking of agenda by vested interests. And they had concrete examples of how the Government’s earlier attempts at revamping the agriculture sector had not had the desired effect. For example, at yesterday’s meeting with the Government, representatives of protesting farmers showed how corporates had defrauded farmers in Madhya Pradesh, promising to pick up crops but not doing so in the end, leaving scores of farmers in Hoshangabad and Guna in the lurch. Some traders, they argued, bought crops from farmers and then bolted without paying them in full.
The farmers are not against market economics but simply want a level-playing field. Experts may argue that the protest is being led by cultivators from Punjab and Haryana, who have benefited because of the Government’s guaranteed pickup of volumes and fixed rates, namely the Minimum Support Price (MSP), and are stuck on cash-rich prospects of wheat and rice. Of course, this assurance has meant an over-dependence on water-intensive crops like paddy and wheat, which is depleting the aquifers and crop diversity. However, farmers argue that they would be incentivised to grow other crops provided the MSP was guaranteed for all and not selectively and new laws alone would not even out the imbalance. In the end, the Government has to give a price guarantee of sorts as the MSP has itself become unremunerative given rising input costs, with farmers forced to sell at lower rates. Farmers are but naturally wary of competitive prices in the open market that would lower their earnings and have a cascading effect on even the protected one. In such a scenario, the Government has to probably do some direct cash transfers to farmers, grading their capacities, as a transitional measure to a new system. The small and marginal farmers, the lot of whom the Acts intend to improve, would not gain that much either given their limited resources to transport their goods to local mandis, leave alone bigger markets outside. Besides, given their low volumes of output and without proper warehousing and processing, they would, therefore, be dependent on food majors. With most of them not literate enough about exercising their rights, dispute resolution could also end up being loaded against them. Although the farmer can now enter into a contract with a corporate entity at a mutually agreed price, the mechanism for price fixation is not codified and farmers fear that corporations could use their might to manipulate or browbeat them into accepting their terms. A licence won’t be required to trade in farm produce and anyone with a PAN card can now buy directly from the farmers. Farmers want they be registered too, considering they have a trusted bond with their existing commission agents, as their licence is proof enough of their credibility and delivery abilities. Farmers are not entirely without reason, battling as they are bad loans and non-payment of sugarcane dues in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The opposition to farm laws could have been avoided had the government preferred Standing Committee scrutiny over pushing the law unceremoniously with a voice vote in the Upper House. A GST-like consensus involving Centre and states would have helped. There was no attempt at consensus-building, no dialogue with the farmers’ unions, State Governments or the Opposition parties. Since agriculture-related issues come under the State List in Schedule VII of the Constitution, the Centre should have consulted States. One just had to look at the playbook of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government on the contentious issue of contract farming, which was envisaged in the National Agriculture Policy, 2000. Instead of bringing a Central law, it circulated a Model Agricultural Produce Marketing (Regulation) Act to the States for adoption in 2003. The ensuing UPA-I Government continued the policy. Contract farming was included as an option in the National Farmers’ Policy, 2007. By August the same year, a total of 15 states had brought amendments in the APMC (Regulation) Acts based on the model legislation. The intransigence on the farm Acts is in contrast with the Government’s handling of the recently enacted labour codes. Although these had some controversial provisions, since they reduced 29 existing labour laws into four legislations, there was not much hue and cry as they were vetted by the department- related Standing Committee of the Lok Sabha. Yes, there is a need to reform agricultural marketing in the time of food surplus. But care should be taken to ensure that the farmers are legally protected in what is still an unequal deal. If only the Acts came with the caveat that “notwithstanding anything contained in the aforesaid sections, no trade transactions should take place below the notified MSP”, the farmers could have been easily pacified. In the end, they make 60 per cent of the country’s population, a voter base that no political party can ignore. And as the local body polls in Haryana show, the ruling BJP has already suffered a blow.
