The farm Bills 2020!

The Indian farm sector is significant, providing employment to 42.38% population in 2019 and having a share of 16% of the Indian GDP. It is the seventh-largest Agri-exporter in the world and is the top milk producer and the second in wheat and rice production. However, the mismatch between inputs cost and realization in farm produce have regularly resulted in farmers taking to protests or committing suicides. If the lack of logistical support in reaching from farm to the platter is one cause, monopolization of middlemen, often politicians, have adversely affected the lives and fortunes of the farmers.

We need to look into the three farmer bills 2020 passed by Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha this week.

The first is the Bill on the agricultural market, giving liberty to the farmers to sell outside the States sponsored agricultural Mandis, including inter-state and intra-state free trade by the farmers. To provide e-platforms for trading by the farmers.

The second is The Farmer (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, among other benefits, would enable farmers to engage directly with corporates for future trades as contracted prices; for the smaller farmers to aggregate their units to enter into contracts with agribusiness firms, processors of wholesalers.

The third Bill, The essential commodities (Amendment) Bill 2020, does away with many draconian provisions earlier existed doing away with stockholding limits etc., to invite FDIs into the farming sector and to improve the farm infrastructure to optimize the yield to farmers.

The introduction of the Bill witnessed the resignation of Hasimrat Badal, a Union Cabinet Minister representing Shiromani AkaliDal and a long-time ally of the BJP. The apprehension of the farmers fed to the predatory corporates have fuelled fears and have resulted in prompt protest marches in many parts of Northern India. Not surprisingly, the Rajya Sabha witnessed tumultuous scenes with the opposition members converging on the well and tearing the bill copy.

Farmers’ lives in the seventy-three years of India’s independence, despite the phenomenal growth in the farming sector, has not improved at all. Politicians and large farmers largely usurp the Income-tax exemptions. The middlemen control the destiny of the farmers, be it abundance produce or the lack of it due to the vagaries of weather. The land size can never increase, but the output per acre can be increased if proper technology and machines, farming methods and inputs are introduced.

The opposing states, rather than outright rejecting the bills, merely because a politically intolerable government brings it, must try to explore the benefits that may accrue to the farmers in the long run. The unaltered provisions of Minimum Support Prices, which continue to stay has been conveniently overlooked by the opposing members. 

I have witnessed the cold storages, despite the ownerships, were managed by the party leaders, who would decide how much tonnage of produce, potatoes, could be accommodated. For those identified as opposition party sympathizers, they were forced to resort to distress selling. If the Bill could end such disorders, I would welcome, such without any hesitation. 

Cereal yield, kg per hectare in India, is 2647.2 as against the US 6624.4. Should we not try to reach three times more like the other?

Keeping farmers in perpetual poverty may be politically beneficial for a few, but for the nation, it may not be an ideal option.

We must move forward.

Sampath Kumar

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