India’s Farmers’ Protests Reject New Laws that Feed Power to Big Corporations
Marie
Senescall
March 22, 2022

In September 2020, India passed the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce Act, which makes it easier for large corporations to monopolize the farming industry, leading to mass demonstrations by farmers across the country. Over half of India’s workforce consists of farmers, and they have been facing a financial crisis for quite some time. Agriculture made up 50% of India’s economy in the 1960s, but it has now shrunk to just 15% since the industrialization and loss of financial stability of the sector. The new laws within the act, passed during the global coronavirus pandemic and without feedback from the 800 million farmers of which their livelihood indirectly or directly depends on, essentially tip the scales of power further away from small farmers and towards large corporations. Though repealing these laws is not a complete solution for the agrarian crisis, the flood of farmers to mass demonstrations and protests shows they are not going to give up in the fight for fairer farming practices.

The three laws enacted as part of the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce Act were put in place by India’s right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Up until September 2020, agricultural products like wheat and rice had a Minimum Support Price (MSP) facilitated by the government wholesale markets, called Mandis, that guaranteed farmers a bare minimum for their goods. Although the laws do not take away the long-standing MSP, farmers fear this legislation is one step further towards its elimination. One of the new laws creates unregulated trade spaces outside of traditional markets, where a lack of government oversight allows big corporate players to underprice small farmers using their market power. The other two farming laws shifted business agreements to be strictly between farmers and traders, making small farmers dependent on terms set by large corporations, and eliminated storage limits set by the government, so anyone with the financial means to do so can stock up and start dictating product prices. Farmers have been asking for reforms in the agricultural sector for decades. More than half of families in the industry are in debt, and struggling to keep up with rapid mechanization and a series of droughts contributing to a major suicide crisis that has claimed over 20,000 lives in two years. Adding insult to injury, the tone-deaf response from the Indian government threatens to cut small farmers out of the industry altogether. This is a major threat as the government lacks social programs to retrain workers or offer alternative factory positions for displaced farmers. Already, the effects of the new regulations have resulted in fewer crops arriving in wholesale markets as over 40 markets in the state of Madhya Pradesh have lost business since the laws were put in effect, and other states are not far behind.

With international scrutiny around the rights of India’s agricultural workers, prompted by the sheer magnitude of arguably the largest protests in history, the government’s response has been strong handed, notably with the arrest of activist Disha Ravi by Delhi Police on claims of sedition. Ravi had been distributing a “toolkit” for activism—which included resources for protest organization, information on calling local representatives, petitions to sign, and social media hashtags to use—when she was arrested. Hashtags of #ToolkitsAreNotSedition and #FreeDishaRavi are circling on Twitter, and a petition for her release has received over 45,000 signatures. The organizer of the petition and a member of the Environment Support Group in Bengaluru, Leo Saldanha, stated of the Indian government, “this sends a message to all young people out there that, you know, shut up and stay at home or this is what is going to happen to you." India’s people are not staying home despite threats, however, as tractors break down police barricades and hundreds of millions of people aim for the capital of Delhi, with one stating to a policeman, “this is a revolution.” Indians in support of the mass demonstrations are a cross-class intersection of those in the agricultural sector, offering hope for combatting right-wing dominance in the country.

Though it may seem that these new laws are specifically targeted to farming, the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce Act, 2020 includes limitations on every Indian’s legal rights. Indian journalist Palagummi Sainath commented that, “the laws contain among the most sweeping exclusions of a citizen’s right to legal recourse in any law outside of the Emergency of 1975-77,” where this emergency act essentially suspended all fundamental rights. Sections 13 and 15 of the September legislation dictate that civil servants are immune to conviction in a court in any scenario. Thus, neither farmers, non-profits, union groups, nor any citizen, can sue, magnifying the power imbalance between farmers and big business who now possess a lighter threat for any legal repercussions. Mainstream media in India has failed to point out the civil limitations of these new laws, attempting to argue the fault is in the delivery and communication of the laws and not in their content. Rights for all citizens are being infringed upon by the new legislation, and the protestors on the borders of Delhi carry a movement much larger than a dispute over farming markets.

It is no coincidence that these controversial laws were passed amidst the spread of COVID-19—the Indian government took advantage of a crisis, believing farmers would be paralysed by the pandemic and unable to organize and resist on a large scale. They were wrong. Protests swelling to hundreds of thousands of people have been sustained for months on the outskirts of Delhi, and many are supporting in whatever way they can. Women in the Petwar village are sending rations and other supplies, including pieces of wood, milk, and sugar to help support the protestors who they see as fighting for small landowners to have fair farming laws. Both the public and the country’s farmers have responded to the new laws surrounding agricultural markets and their legal rights by committing to fight back against an industry takeover by large corporations.

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