JOIN USThe bills on agriculture and farm trade passed by Parliament amidst strong opposition by many parties are intended to reform the agriculture sector but have evoked widespread protests from the very farmers who are being told they will benefit from them. The bills enable far-reaching changes, mainly relating to the marketing and trade of farm produce. They seek to create a common market for farm produce, apparently reduce the importance of the marketing system based on Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMC), facilitate contract farming in a major way and lift stockholding restrictions. The minimum support price (MSP) mechanism for major farm produce and procurement by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) served to stabilise the prices of farm produce for many years. There is fear that these stabilising influences are in danger now.
The government has said that the apprehensions are misplaced as the APMCs and MSP will continue. It has said that farmers will have more freedom and choice than before. But no consultations have been done on the matter with farmers. There are complaints that the new system is violative of the federal spirit. States have also not been consulted on the new laws although agriculture is a state subject and the trade at APMCs is a key source of revenue for them. Any agency, including corporates, can now buy any amount of produce from farmers, unconstrained by stockholding regulations. Small farmers worry that they may be exploited in the new scheme, especially if the APMC and MSP system becomes weak. A new corporate culture and practices associated with it may come to dominate agriculture and farm trade, and farmers may have to submit to price manipulation and other pressures, and whatever autonomy they have now may suffer. The government’s assurances on these matters have not reassured the farmers.
The laws are intended to modernise farming and the farm market. But ‘reforms’ and ‘modernisation’ are often mere codewords for corporatisation of a sector. While the laws are being sold to the nation as born of a commitment to free markets, there can be no free market when commerce is between unequal parties, such as it would be between big corporates and their buying power and the small and marginal farmers, who dominate India’s farm landscape, and their need to quickly sell their perishable produce. Farmers will gain from competition and choice only if the entry of corporate interests and practices goes hand in hand with a strengthening of the APMC system and farmers’ cooperatives. It is not late even now for the government and Parliament to incorporate into the new laws stronger safeguards against exploitation of farmers.