Farmers strike back: the legacy of Indian agriculture and the threat of commercialization
By: Harish Sundar
Tags: Protest, Capitalism, India, Agriculture, Farming

Painting by Narayan Shelke

On August 15th, 1947, Sardar Ajit Singh uttered his last breath,”Thank god, my aim is complete.” This was the very day India would declare her independence from the throes of British colonialism, a cause Ajit Singh dedicated his life towards. He is also renowned as the hero of the “Pagdi Sambhal Jatta” movement, a pioneering revolution against imperial attacks on the agrarian population of India.

Sardar Ajit Singh on a 1999 stamp of India

In 1879, the British built the Upper Bari Doab canal to bring water from the Chenab river to Lyallpur(present day Faisalabad of Pakistan). The aim of the British was to maximize profit from the uninhabited land by exploiting the labor of peasants and ex-servicemen from the Punjab. In return for their relocation to these canal colonies, the farmers were promised free land and amenities. In other words, the peasantry of the region were coerced to leave behind their properties and labor to convert the barren earth into farmable land. Immediately following the farmers’ efforts to make the land fertile, the British seized control of the land by passing new laws, denying the right of ownership to the peasants. The result of these laws effectively transformed the farmers to sharecroppers, who had no legal authority over the land. Violators to these new set of laws faced eviction.

Ajit Singh was arrested in 1907(along with Lala Lajpat Rai) by the British police, and was deported to Mandalay. However, the seeds of revolution had been sown, as the Pagdi Sambhal Jatta movement spread from peasants to the British army(composed of Indian soldiers), forcing the government to withdraw the unfair farm laws and return rightful ownership of the land to the farmers. As a result, Sardar Ajit Singh was released from prison and returned a hero.

Ancient India: an agricultural society

The Indian agricultural system, which began as early as 9000 BC, plays a pivotal role in the nation’s economy. The Indus Vally Civilization thrived as an agricultural society as a result of several sophisticated developments, such as advanced irrigation and water storage systems. Agriculture is and has always been a major facet of the livelihood of the Indian people. People who worked closely with nature were considered to be working closely with God. In his eyewitness description of the agriculture of the Mauryan empire, Megasthenes(300 BC) writes,“India has many huge mountains which abound in fruit-trees of every kind, and many vast plains of great fertility. The greater part of the soil is under irrigation and consequently bears two crops in the course of the year. In addition to cereals, there grows millets and different sorts of pulse and rice throughout India. Since there are two monsoons in the course of each year the inhabitants gather in two harvests annually.”

Also thriving was the agricultural society of ancient South India. South Indian farmers cultivated a wide range of crops such as rice, sugarcane, millets, black pepper, various grains, coconuts, beans, cotton, tamarind and sandalwood, jackfruit, coconut, palm, areca and plantain trees. Kallanai (1st-2nd century AD), a dam built on river Kaveri is considered the as one of the oldest water-regulation structures in the world that is still in use today.

Kallanai Dam(Grand Anicut)

Indian agriculture under the East India Company

The pre-British agricultural economy was strongly based on the village system and collective land ownership. The British conquest of India resulted in the disintegration of the village community by the introduction of land revenue systems and the commercialization of agriculture. The effect of these new systems was the exploitation of Indian land and the peasantry, and the country continually grappled with famine. The British Raj considerably developed Indian infrastructure, creating railways, spreading irrigation, and creating revenue settlements, all with the primary goal not of developing the nation, but maximizing the economic drain of the subcontinent. In the years dominated by the East India Company, there were two primary systems of administration in regards to land ownership and labour. The Zamindari system, incorporated in Bengal and surrounding areas, and later spread to neighbouring states, was a sort of permanent settlement that raised the status of revenue collectors to that of landlords, or Zamindars. These Zamindars were responsible for depositing an enhanced land revenue to the state. Another system in place in large parts of Bombay and Madras was the Ryotwari settlement, where each peasant held a plot of land and was recognized as the landlord, making direct annual payments of land revenue. Both of these systems involved exorbitant land rents and were responsible for the destruction of the organic village community based on custom and tradition. Daniel and Alice Thorner write “Whereas the zamindari system made the land lords masters of the village communities, the ryotwari system cut through the heart of the village communities by making separate arrangements between each peasant cultivator and the state.” The British land system helped concentrate economic power in the hands of absentee landlord and moneylenders, and discouraged the agriculture and peasantry of rural India.

Indian agriculture under the British Raj

Under the formally established British Raj between the years 1850 and 1947, the portrait of farming in India was transformed by the commercialization of of agriculture. Commercialization is fundamentally characterized by the production of crops for sale rather than economic consumption. It was not any new development in the history of Indian agriculture for a surplus of agricultural output to result in directing a portion of returns toward the market. However, the commercialization of agriculture India saw during the period of British rule was a deliberate policy of the British industrial system to maximize their profit from the land and people of India. By institutionalizing profit as the primary driver of agricultural activity, Indian farmers were dissuaded from producing necessary food crops to producing commercial crops. This period of Indian history was marked by terrible famines, a direct result of the shortage of food production for the Indian people. These effects persisted into the early years of India’s independence, as the country faced a major food shortage. The development of agriculture was a top priority for the foundation of India following the exit of the British. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru expressed this when saying, “everything else can wait but not agriculture,” and the new government focused on delivering public policies and plans for investing towards promoting India’s agricultural productivity. The Green Revolution of the 1960s saw the implementation of several novel agricultural technologies, such as high-yielding varieties of seeds(HYV), improved fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation techniques. While this movement was largely beneficial to establishing India’s self-sufficiency in regards to feeding the population, it also received criticism as contributing to the degradation of the land, a generally negative ecological impact, as well as having long-term negative sociological and financial impacts on the peasantry.

2020 farm bill and backlash

Recently, the central government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) has enacted three crucial farm bills that claim to promote the economic prosperity of the farmer population. This action has resulted in widespread backlash, inciting massive protests mainly from the agricultural populations of Punjab and Haryana. The three bills — The Farmers (Empowerment & Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, The Essential Commodities Act (Amendment) Bill and Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill — proclaimed as progressive agricultural reforms by the Modi administration, have some fundamental flaws. The first critique is that agriculture is a state issue and should not come under laws enacted by the central government, and that this is a basic infringement of the Modi government into the affairs of individual states. Second, the small farmers of India fear that these new bills increase their vulnerability to agribusiness corporations.

Breakdown of the bill

The Farmers (Empowerment & Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill draws a framework for contract farming agreement between farmers and buyer before sowing of a crop and for dispute settlement prescribes three level mechanisms — the conciliation board, sub-divisional magistrate and appellate authority. What this means is, companies are not obligated to have a written contract with farmers, leaving farmers no protection against any violation of terms of agreement. Companies that fail to register their contracts are not penalized, a matter that raised concerns last year when potato farmers from Gujarat were penalized by Pepsico for growing the same seed varieties, and had to lobby their concerns in court and protest with farmer organizations to receive justice. Another concern that is heavily emphasized by the protesters is that there are no provisions in the bill that the contract price of the crop should be at least equivalent or above the MSP(minimum support price), meaning companies have sole discretion over the price they pay to farmers. The MSP has been a longstanding support mechanism for farmers to ensure their basic livelihoods, and India has had a poor experience with contract farming with farmers getting very low rates as opposed to selling their produce in government mandis at the minimum support price.

The Essential Commodities Act Bill empowers the central government to regulate food items in extraordinary circumstances or impose stock limits if there is a steep rise in prices. Farmers fear that this allows companies and traders to hoard as much quantity of food as they wish. The effects of this amendment are that the government loses its control in preventing hoarding and regulating price inflation. The government can now only intervene if there is a 50% increase in prices over the previous year’s price in regards to non-perishable goods and 100% increase in prices over the previous year’s price in regards to perishable goods.

The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce(Promotion and Facilitation) Bill allows trade beyond the physical premises of APMC(Agricultural Produce and Livestock Market Committee) markets. The state will now be prohibited from levying any market fees or cess outside APMC areas. This essentially means that the government is opening the sale of farmers’ produce to anyone, and agribusiness companies, corporate entities, and traders will be allowed to open their own markets to buy from farmers. Farmers fear that there is no regulation of trade outside the APMC mandis, and this destroys the level playing field between the APMC markets and other traders. Farmers are demanding that the state and local governments should be given authority to regulate the markets, a request that has been ignored. Additionally, if the farmers suspect any unfair proceedings on behalf of any traders/agents/corporations, they will no longer be able to voice their complaints to the APMC officers located in the mandi itself, and instead must go to a sub-divisional magistrate court. Many fear that this is beyond the capacity of small farmers and that it is unjust on the part of the government to allow for instances where small farmers have to compete in legal battles with bigger corporations.

O pposition to legislation

These are the concerns that have led to the largest protest recorded in human history, with people all over India — and the world — striving to make their voices heard in support of Indian farmers. The farming populations of the states of Punjab and Haryana are specifically agitated, as they have tended over the years to rely more on the MSP than other states. Thousands of farmers have marched to Delhi and occupied the nation’s capital to voice their demands. Working class people all over India have also broken out in protest across several other states in support of farmers rights and against corporate animosity.

However, this is not the first time farmers have sought to raise their concerns against the central government. In 2017, a smaller group of around 100 farmers also lobbied the central government in Delhi. The farmers came from drought-stricken areas of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and demanded sufficient drought relief funds, pensions for elderly farmers, a waiver on the repayment of crop and farm loans, better prices for their crops, and the interlinking of rivers to irrigate their lands. However, these farmers did not garner nearly as much media attention, and the small amount they did largely misrepresented their uncanny means of protesting as bizarre and unruly, instead of the agony and desperation they strove to symbolize. The farmers who felt they were not receiving enough attention from the government as well as the media resorted to extreme measures such as holding live mice in their mouths, shaving half their heads, slashing their hands, rolling bare-bodied on boiling hot macadam, and conducting mock funerals. Fire-fighters rescued a protester who tied a noose around his neck and tried to hang himself from a tree at the venue, and many other protesters were taken to the hospital and treated for acute dehydration. These protests were a symbol of the struggle of India’s most vulnerable populations, and how the failure of the government to responsibility tend to its farming population in times of outright crisis brings these crucial members of society to a precarious existence.

The central government has opened dialogue with the protesters, however many are unimpressed with the lack of assertive and vigorous attempts by the Modi administration to engage with and sympathize with the agricultural population. Although many argue that the intention of the farm bills is to support farmers, it is clearly evident that the protesters raise legitimate concerns regarding their economic stability and means of livelihood. Instead of responding to criticism in a productive manner, the government displayed hostility towards protesters with no regard for their freedom of speech and right to protest. Protesters in the nations capital were met with barbed wire, police lathis, and water hoses. The farmers who feed the nation were largely branded as anti-nationals or terrorists by the news media.

The government is exhibiting a callous amnesia towards the history of the commercialization of agriculture, the harmful effects it poses to the large working-class peasantry population, and is instead attempting to pave the way for large agribusiness corporations. In the failure of the government to respect, support, and decorate farmers as the soul of the nation, India enters a disgraceful period in its history. The only way forward is for the government to take proactive steps towards addressing the genuine concerns of citizens and healing the wound they have dealt to the nations farmers.

Sources:

https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijhsse/v4-i7/4.pdf