On November 19, 2021, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the repeal of the three controversial agricultural laws after thousands of farmers camped at Delhi`s border crossings in a protest on a scale not seen since November 2020. Modi admitted he had failed to convince farmers and called on them to halt their year-long protest. In his speech, he said: „I apologize to you, my compatriots, that, despite the good intentions of my government, there may have been a certain deficiency in our tapasya (penance), that we could not convince some of our peasant brothers of the intentions of these laws, which were as pure as the light of a lamp.” For both progressives and nationalists, there are many positive implications of this historic struggle. First, it has been very clear that issues of price and income cannot be ignored. Second, free market forces and neoliberal policies will no longer win the support of smallholder farmers trying to secure their livelihoods. Third, Indian farmers – and since many come from agriculture, jawans (soldiers) – cannot be oppressed. These are our national assets and icons. The slogan jai jawan, jai Kisan (Hi Soldier) still rings a bell in the national psyche. The centre said it was trying to shift the risk of market unpredictability from farmers to sponsors. In addition to access to modern technology and better inputs, farmers` incomes also need to be increased by reducing marketing costs. As a reminder, the three laws each aimed to remove restrictions on buyers, storage, subcontracting and the purchase of agricultural raw materials. Considering that the Essential Products (CEC) Amendment Act, 2020 was largely the prerogative of the Centre, the Price Insurance and Agricultural Services Agreement on Price Insurance and Agricultural Services on Farmers` Price Insurance and Agricultural Services Agreement, 2020 Act, 2020 and the Agricultural Trade and Trade (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 (hereinafter the `Agricultural Products Trading and Trade` Act, 2020 (`the circumvention of the CMPA”), which focused on regulated public procurement, until now, matters that fell under the laws of the Agricultural Marketing Committee (AMCPA) at the state level therefore fell within the competence of the states.

On the other hand, Article 6 prohibited the levying of market fees or levies under a State APMC law or other State law in respect of transactions outside the APMC market. Article 14 gave a comprehensive effect on the conflicting provisions of the states` CMPA laws, and Article 17 authorized the Centre to establish rules for the implementation of the provisions of the Act. The government had proposed these laws as reforms similar to those of 1991 that liberalized the Indian economy and linked it to globalized markets. The new laws aimed to strengthen the basic infrastructure of the agricultural sector through more private investment. Ramkumar Pagdiwale, a sugar cane farmer in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, built a small shrine in his bamboo tent in a protest camp built in the middle of a highway on the eastern outskirts of the Indian capital. Lauren Frayer/NPR Hide the legend The three farm bills, which have sparked unprecedented protests from farmers for more than a year, will be withdrawn, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an astonishing speech to the country. But as farmers celebrate their victory this week, analysts say there could be a glimmer of hope for the prime minister as well. „I will miss all these friends! It`s been a year. Now these [co-farmers] are like my family,” Hooda says. „It was the best year of my life.

It really taught me how to fight and live. » READ: 3 agricultural laws will also be withdrawn soon: Rahul Gandhi after cops start removing barricades at protest site The solution to the many problems of Indian agriculture and Indian farmers would never be solved by the three agricultural laws, not even in the field of marketing. Even the repeal of these three laws will not reverse or slow the rapid growth of private actors in agricultural marketing over the past two decades, as shown by the 2019 assessment of the situation of farm households in India. Even in Punjab, an opposition-ruled state, the BJP had little hope of moving forward without peasant votes. Punjab is known as the breadbasket of India, where rice and wheat producers provide a disproportionate share of the country`s staple foods. It is also a Sikh majority state, unlike most of India, which has a Hindu majority. Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist at the World Bank, called the new farm bills „flawed” and „harmful to farmers.” [51] In February 2021, 413 academics from across India and several foreign universities said in a statement that the new Farm Bills posed a major threat to Indian farming communities and called on the government to abandon them. The signatories of the declaration came from Jawaharlal Nehru University, IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IISc Bangalore, Indian Institute of Statistics, Calcutta, Indian Institute of Statistics, Kolkata, University of Delhi, Punjab University, IIT Bombay, IIM Kolkata, London Film School, University of Johannesburg, University of Oslo, from the University of Massachusetts, the University of Pittsburgh and others. [52] Currently, the government sets minimum prices for 22 crops considered staple foods, including wheat and rice.

But it is not technically illegal to sell these factories below the minimum support price or MSP. Farmers want PSM to be enshrined in law and better enforced. (With lax oversight, some wholesale buyers ignore minimum prices and trick farmers into selling their crops at lower prices, often at a loss.) Some farmers also want the list of eligible crops to be expanded beyond these 22 staple foods. READ ALSO: Punjab farmers` unions meet tomorrow and are likely to decide to end protests The country`s president, Ram Nath Kovind, on Wednesday night signed a bill repealing laws after it was passed by the lower and upper houses of parliament earlier this week. In India, agriculture is a political issue and the protests have posed a rare challenge to the BJP. There are about 7,000 APMC mandis across the country, from where government agencies, including the Food Corporation of India (FCI), buy agricultural products. In a practical sense, however, only rice and wheat are purchased by the FCI and other agencies due to lack of money. The FCI sells these food grains through the public distribution system (PDS) at a concessional price to families below the poverty line (GLP). This is a deficit or well-being-oriented practice. As the BBC reported, digital investigators also uncovered a network of fake social media profiles that tried to slander Sikhs and bolster the image of the Indian government during the peasant protests. It bears the hallmark of the BJP`s previous disinformation campaigns, although there is no evidence of a link and the government has refused to comment on the report. This law allowed farmers to exchange their products outside of physical markets, which were notified under various state laws of the Agricultural Products Marketing Committee (APMC).

It repealed all APMC laws at the state level. Although farmers raised objections to the three farm laws, the main problem was this law, also known as the „CMPA Bypass Bill.” Breeders feared that its regulation would weaken the APMC-Mandis. Now that Modi is giving in and repealing the laws, some farmers are packing their belongings and returning to their fields. Others say they squat down and make more requests. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the three laws would be repealed during the winter session of Parliament. He said the laws were passed with the aim of bringing about reforms in the agricultural sector, but that the government had „failed” to convince farmers that they were for their well-being. READ ALSO: We couldn`t convince farmers: Yogi Adityanath hails Prime Minister Modi`s decision to repeal agricultural laws Ramkumar Pagdiwale, who is 50, has built a small shrine in this sprawling protest camp, with water goggles from the Ganges, land from his farm about 30 miles away and an oil lamp that has special significance for him. He belonged to his ancestors. India is self-sufficient in the production of various types of food. Nevertheless, nutrition and hunger are endemic problems in the country[14][15] despite large-scale social assistance programmes in the region. [16] Farmer suicides and farmers` incomes are also serious challenges that have not been solved for decades.

[17] [18] On the occasion of Gurupurab on the 19th. In November 2021, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that his government would repeal all three laws at the next winter session of parliament in December. In a televised speech, Modi lamented his government`s failure to convince farmers of the benefits of the law, stating:[10][76][77] Previously, farmers had to sell their produce at auction, where they received at least the government-agreed minimum support price (MSP) for some of their crops. The new laws were aimed at relaxing the rules for the sale and pricing of agricultural products, which protected farmers from an unregulated free market. Secondly, these were hastily adopted in Parliament by vote, which is considered by experts to be a violation of established procedures. That laws with serious implications for states are also passed in parliament without further discussion, let alone specific contributions from stakeholders and experts, is confusing. Attempts by some to deflect this criticism by pointing to the long history of discussion of agricultural market reform only serve to shed light on the abandonment of such a tradition in the case of these three laws. Such opaque processes increase the likelihood of poorly formulated laws; In fact, many critics have pointed to serious flaws in these laws.

While it is difficult to contradict the supposed purpose of these laws, many critics question the premise itself, pointing out that it was naïve at best and insidious at worst; The laws, in fact, load the dice in favor of deep-pocketed companies that would now use that freedom, not to compete, but to circumvent competition, to take control of supply chains at the expense of farmers.