Farmers Protests in India: India's Agrarian Economy—An Ongoing Issue 

India is an agrarian economy with more than half of the population in agriculture-related professions. Its agriculture industry has multiple long-standing problems that impact the livelihoods of agriculture workers in the country. The industry has been experiencing slow growth with very low public investments. Frequent droughts, floods, and extreme weather changes caused by climate change make growing crops difficult. Additionally, as Harsh Mander, a social researcher whose work focuses on poverty and the food economy in India, writes, “Among many problems, farmers in India struggle with massive landlessness, share-cropping, unremunerative prices, and debilitating indebtedness.” 

 

Farmers have protested these dismal conditions throughout the years by throwing produce on roads, knowing that they could not sell it for profit, anyways. The largest and most widespread farmer protests began at the end of November 2020, when thousands of farmers gathered in Haryana and Punjab and marched to Delhi, the capital city of India, to protest against three farm laws passed in September 2020. 

 

The protests went on for two months with thousands of protesting farmers camping at Delhi, with no proper response or initiative from the government. The Indian Supreme Court decided to then intervene and form a panel to hold discussions on farm laws and hear protesters’ grievances. The Court stated that it was  “disappointed” with the government’s handling of the protests and would try to prevent the laws from being implemented.  

 

The laws primarily irritating farmers are: The Essential Commodities Amendment Act and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act. The Essential Commodities Amendment Act removes foodstuff such as cereals, pulses, vegetables, edible oilseeds, and oils from the list of essential commodities, removing stock holding limits on agricultural items and giving the option to hoard. With the exception of natural calamities and steep increases in prices, the government will not intervene to set a limit to the price. The act amends the pre-existing Essential Commodities Act set up in 1955 to avoid black-marketing and hoarding by companies to create an artificial scarcity and increase in prices. The 1955 act was also set up to keep essential items like food items affordable for consumers. 

The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act gives farmers the option to enter a contract with big corporations at a pre-decided fixed rate. Government-controlled wholesale markets, known as mandi systems, and minimum support price (a floor price provided by the government) (MSP) will exist along with the option to enter into contracts.

 

In an interview with Scroll.in, Pradeep Singh, a small farmer who owns two acres of land and is from Haryana’s Jhajjar district, explained that, "These agriculture laws are going to kill us." He argues that private companies have the ability to monopolize and buy agricultural products at low prices.  He breaks down the economics of growing crops and claims that the farm acts will further decrease the profits that farmers can make and will increase the profits of corporations.

 

Singh earns a total of 20,000 rupees ($273.12 USD) after working diligently on his land for six months. Singh took a loan of 700,000 rupees ($9559.2 USD) from a middleman (a person who buys harvested produce from farmers and sells it at the market). He was also among many small farmers hurt by American sanctions on Iran, as it is one of the biggest rice importers in the world. The price point fell from 4000 rupees ($54.624 USD) per kilogram of rice to 2000 ($27.312 USD) rupees per kilogram of rice. As a result of the financial difficulties, he could not enroll his son in primary school. 

 

Pradeep Singh also mentioned that under the new laws, disputes between farmers and buyers are to be settled at the level of a sub-divisional magistrate, not in civil courts. He argues that small farmers like him are unlikely to have enough agricultural produce or resources to negotiate a profitable outcome. Mander writes that “with these farm acts, farmers believe that they are thrown into highly unequal individual negotiations with super-rich corporations.” 

 

The BBC Punjab explained the statistics of India’s small farmers and their fears. 86% of farmers own less than five acres of land and are small farmers. 68% of them own less than one hectare of land. Only 6% of them receive guaranteed price support for their crops, and more than 90% of the farmers sell their produce in the mandi system (the market places mainly concerned with the buying, temporary storage and selling of farm producers). More than half of the farmers do not have enough produce to make profits without the mandi system. The farmers fear that deregulating the agriculture industry and strengthening the private corporations will weaken the local markets they rely on and will ultimately lead to decreased prices. Small farmers who farm on fragmented landholdings may lose their lands due to the decrease in crop prices. Protesting farmers also fear that the monopolization by corporations, along with the removal of agriculture produce in the Essential Commodities Act, will eventually break down the mandi system they rely on and the MSP. In order to eliminate the likelihood of ending MSP as private corporations take over, protesting farmers demanded a new law guaranteeing MSP.

 

Sudha Narayanan, a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in New Delhi, writes, “All three acts focus not directly on farmer welfare but on improving the ‘ease of doing business’ for supply chain actors, especially non-traditional private players, such as agritech companies and retailers.” 

 

The government of India has been criticized for its handling of dissent and protests. According to a report by Aljazeera, “The government put Iron nails in the roads around Delhi to stop the massive protests.” They also set up barbed wires, steel barricades, and concrete walls, and riot police. As the farmers camped in Delhi, they were attacked with stones, and their tents were torn up. They were shot with water cannons, tear-gassed, and hit with batons in an attempt to clear the protest camps. The United Nations Human Rights Council issued a statement asking the authorities to ensure that the right to peaceful protests was upheld. 

 

Ministers, activists, and opposition leaders who supported the farmers' protests were arrested and detained, including Arwind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi. Not only did the government violate democratic protections by attempting to clear peaceful protests, they also charged journalists covering the issue under draconian sedition laws. 

 

Farmers unions claim that at least 70 farmers have died while protesting due to the biting cold, accidents, and medical emergencies at the protesting sites. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, dismissed the concerns raised by farmers saying that the protesting farmers have been “misguided.” The farmers disinclination to work with corporations is dismissed as ignorance despite many protesting farmers citing that they have suffered losses under similar previous contracts with private corporations. 

Now, almost a year later,  India’s protesting farmers are continuing to peacefully protest, demanding a complete repeal of the farm laws. Farmers at protesting sites have left behind their families and villages, and are risking their lives every day in harsh weather conditions while the government does not pay any heed to their demands. Several rounds of talks between protesting farmers and government officials have remained inconclusive. Members of families are taking turns in returning to their villages to keep the protests going. Farmers from different regional, religious, and linguistic backgrounds are staying together, supporting each other in solidarity against the laws. While the future of the laws is still uncertain, farmers are relentlessly protesting, risking everything.