Why farmers are protesting ?
By: Sandhya Gupta
Tags: Agriculture, Farmerprotest, Farm Bills 2020, Punjab, Protest

India is a country where agriculture is the source of income for around 50% of the work force and contributes to around 20% of the GDP. Now, there is a huge outrage against the “New Farms Act 2020". The President of India gave final green flag to the “New Farms Act 2020” on 27th Sept. 2020.

This article explains the acts from different perspectives and tries to understand the ground of questions circulating over all the mediums.

“New Farms Act 2020”

The Farms Act consists of 3 acts —

Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020

This act allows the farmers to sell their produce outside of Mandis regulated by APMC of State Government. This allows the farmer to make inter and intra state selling of their agriculture produce and private player can also be involved in the deal hence increasing the buyer options for farmers so that they can sell wherever they get better price.

This act also removes any market fee, cess, etc. on farmers or traders for any deal done outside the Mandis.

Farmers (Empowerment and protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act 2020

This act provides a way for contract farming between the farmer and buyer before the season of crop production or cutting. The minimum period of agreement will be one crop season.

There is no any minimum price guaranteed for such contracts by the law and in case if there is any dispute, there is a 3 level mechanism for settlement- the conciliation board, Sub-Division Magistrate and Appelatte Authority.

The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020

This act deregulate the power of government to intervene in the production, storage, and supply of food items like cereals, onion, pulses, potato, etc. except when there is any extraordinary case like war, famine, etc. This means there is no limit to stock a commodity by any buyer until there is -

100% increase in retail price of horticultural produce and, 50% increase in the retail price of non-perishable agricultural food items.

The increase will be calculated over the price prevailing immediately preceding twelve months, or the average retail price of the last five years, whichever is lower.

Issues raised by Farmers

Farmers are suspicious that since there is no market fees and cess outside the Mandis, this will eventually transform all the trade outside the Mandis and they will be left only with private player with No government intervention, No minimum price for their produce (Minimum Support Price Or MSP) and they will be heavily exploited . For contract farming, farmers have issues that private players can bind them with unfavourable contracts and it will not be possible for a poor farmer to get into legal battle with big corporates. Small traders will be on the mercy of big private players once they create a monopoly. Since, there will be no MSP (Minimum Support Price), farmers will have to take whatever price will be given for their produce. Farmers are doubtful about the Essential Commodities Act as well because this will allow the corporates to store as much commodities as they want until there is extreme price hike and they can regulate the prices in the market as well.

Why only Punjab and Haryana farmers are protesting ?

This question is viral across all social media channels that why only Punjab and Haryana farmers have problems ? But, the reality is, there is outrage from different parts of the country like Western UP, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha and many others states.

Punjab and Haryana farmers started protest first and have heavy issues because agriculture is the main occupation for people of Punjab and Haryana and they were being benefited by MSP much more than farmers in other parts of India.

Conclusion

Farmers and government have different perspectives on the Acts but the good thing is that now there is discussion happening about it. In country like India, the private parties and government need to collaborate for the development of country. The government now needs to get the trust of farmers because for India farming is not an industry it’s a way of living !