Farmers’ protest — An age-old battle between Capitalism and Socialism
By: Ajay Ganesan
Tags: Socialism, Farmers Protest, Indian Politics, Politics, Capitalism

Three farm acts were passed by the Indian Government which basically encourages free market that will diversify the options that the farmers currently have for selling their goods. To put it more simply, the farmers can sell their products to anybody as opposed to the traditional ‘Mandis’ that being the only option currently.

Then why are the Farmers protesting? Answer is very simple.

The Socialist mindset

To understand what I mean by the socialist mindset the understanding of Capitalism and Socialism is very much needed. Let me put differences between the both in simple terms below.

One could be easily inspired by socialism because it says that it is the voice of the working class who has been systematically oppressed by the capitalist class for centuries. To put it more crudely, Socialism divides the society into two sets of people namely the rich and the poor and it says it is the voice of the poor. Socialism’s rise was happened in the aftermath of colonialism which meant that almost all parts of the world including Russia, China, India, many parts of Africa went socialist. As soon as this is put into implementation, the whole thing imploded. Communist party of Russia collapses, all the countries which adopted socialism started fleeing socialism. India was no exception to that.

Why Socialism failed miserably?

The Government controlling almost everything is the main reason for the collapse of Socialism. Believe it or not, India was a socialist country. What this really means? Let me give a few examples. The telephone company was nationalized that one had no choice in getting the phone set-up from other companies. This meant that one had to wait for a long time to get a telephone connection set-up in the home. This is true even in today’s case. Think if you will opt BSNL broadband or some private-owned broadband like Airtel, Jio, Act etc. The private-owned broadband companies stands out in all the aspects of their broadband services like speed, reliability, customer experience, service(It takes days for a BSNL technician to come home and address the issue). Government workers have the best job security which means that they will never be assessed based on their performances. The workers become less-caring about the company since they knew that the Government would anyway pay them and will never fire them. But think from a consumer standpoint, when they don’t have any choices but this employee-centric, non-customer-oriented Government company.

The socialism means misery, scarcity, less opportunity, corruption, no choices!

Let’s now get back to the farmers’ protest issue.The current option for the farmers to sell their products is just one place ‘Mandi’. If a farmer from TN wants to sell their products directly to Punjab it is not at all possible as they cannot do that. To overcome this ‘less-opportunity, no-choice’ socialist idea, the pro-capitalist Indian government is trying to bring more options to the farmers to sell their products. The new farm laws allows the farmers to sell to anybody not just through Mandi.

The capitalism means more opportunities, free market, liberty, less corruption, more innovation!

Government can restrict its role in involving in the markets to bring more competition thereby driving innovation to bring prosperity to the country and its people. It can always bring good amount of regulations to make sure that things happen in a fair way.

The socialist mindset

The very idea of Government should own the production or distribution of goods and products is the socialist mindset and never worked and will never work efficiently. The word privatization by the Government raises many eye brows even now really shows the deeply rooted socialist mindset of the people. These people who speak against privatization are raising their voices in the private-owned Whatsapp / Facebook. Privatization is not a bad thing at all, instead in-fact is the best way to bring new opportunities and prosperity in the lives of people with Government regulations put in place. All thriving and successful economies are capitalist economies like the United States, Singapore etc.

Ending this by saying out load, ‘Let’s us get out of the socialist Mindset’ and with two of my favorite quotes!