FARMERS PROTEST ON FARM BILLS 2020: EXPLAINED

Indian Government has introduced 3 new farm bills and passed all 3 of them. In this article let’s discuss what those 3 bills are, it’s pros and cons, and what the protests that are mostly coming from northwest states are really about.

Bill-1: *Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce Bill:-*

It says that a farmer can sell his/her products anywhere in  India unlike previous rule where they could only sell their products in either “Raithu(Farmer) Bazaar” or in “Town Mandis”.

Bill-2: *Farmers Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill*:

This says that a farmer can make a pre-agreement with a company or organization and sell his/her products based on that agreement.

Bill-3: *Amendment of Essential Commodities Bill*:-

With this amendment, the government is no more going to withhold or store some of the common essential commodities(నిత్యావసర వస్తువులు).

Now let’s talk about their pros and cons.

->With the first bill Farmers can now go to any state of India where the demand for their products is high and sell that for a higher price. Before this bill Farmers had soo many restrictions to sell their products in other states.

->Again main purpose of 1st bill is to reduce Farmer’s dependence on Middle men’s of Mandis where they used to buy the product for less price from Farmers and then later sell that product for higher prices.

->under 2nd Bill  more and more private firms can now make agreements with farmers to take their products and give them the money as discussed in the agreement.

->With 3rd bill now that the government is not going to store much of the farm products the chance of variance in the Supply-Demand chain will be reduced.

->In most of the northwest states (like Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh,e.t.c.) the “Mandi” system works pretty fine and farmers also have no problem with that. So they are worried that there might be a disturbance in this normal activity. Here, few southern states are accepting the proposed bill.

-> With the arrival of more and more big private firms, the control of price for the farm products may go to the private hands. And also private companies may not buy every product that a farmer produces. This leads to contract farming. Then, the farmer needs to sow the crop that is demanded by the Agro company. The farmer may become the slave of private bosses.

->Now that the government is not storing much of the products, If an unwanted or unexpected demand for any farm product arrives government can no more have the ability to control that demand. When government doesn’t store them, farmer should approach some private cold storages where they collect more money which becomes a burden to the farmer.

*Conclusion and Our view about this:*

This liberalization (Lifting the restrictions on private activities) that Government is bringing to the farming sector might help much of the farmers who are already frustrated with the middle man’s atrocities happening in many parts of southern India and other parts. Protesters too got a point to afraid about since this may disrupt many normal activities and said that the MSP(Minimum Selling Price) of the products too might get effected. To which PM Modi responded by tweeting that the MSP method will not go anywhere and they will follow this process too along with bringing new means of selling points. This means that we can consider this new arrival of bills are just some additions happening for the farmers to find new ways of selling their products. But also the fear that protesters are showing is also not negligible considering the fact that most of the Government plan only works on paper but fails in Implementation. So in simple words, only time can decide whether the current fear is logical or just a bunch of people being Paranoid.

Government should give the way they are going to solve the above issues. A written paper should be presented in the parliament so, that even the opposition backs the proposal. Opposition doesn’t always support the government. But, the bill should surely address the issues with a proper and practical solution.