Protest of the Privileged

Context: Recent farmers protest and related violence on Republic Day has caused debates around the world over the effectiveness of the recently passed three farm laws.

Concerns with the new farm laws: 

• Fear of transfer of agriculture land from farmers to big companies.
• Withdrawal of government support: Like public procurement of food-grains at Minimum Support Prices (MSP), leading to the closure of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs).

Inherent Issues with farm sector: which strengthens the credibility of farm laws

• High Economic Cost: almost Rs 2 lakh crore borne by Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state agencies having huge stocks of grains almost three times the buffer stock norms.
  • Wastage: A good part of procured grains rot, are pilfered, or eaten by rodents.
  • Uncompetitive exports: for wheat and paddy as domestic prices are higher than international prices due to MSP.
• Skewed procurement: >50% of all the rice and wheat procured by government agencies comes from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. (Highly remunerative due to subsidies and assured returns)

• • Top 3.7% of farmers have 36.3% of the land, while Dalits, (32% of Punjab’s population), hardly own 3% of the land.
  • Have a large marketable surplus, pocket a bulk of MSP, also don the commission agent (arhatiya) hat which comes handy as agricultural income is tax-exempt.
• Ill targeted MSP: Only 6% of farmers benefit from MSP In a country where 86% of farmers fall in the small and marginal category — net buyers of food-grains.
• Ineffective loan waiver schemes: despite ten states announcing a loan waiver of 2.4 lakh crore rupees in six years (up to 2019-20), 
  • National Crime Records Bureau data found that 10,281 farmers had committed suicide in 2019.