Farmers Movement Archive

'Government farm laws are a remedy, not a malady'

NEW DELHI: The farm reforms legislated by the Centre are a “remedy, not malady” that was long overdue even as India’s agriculture sector has shown its resilience and contributed to green shoots of the economy with a growth rate of 3.4% despite the Covid-induced lockdown, said the Economic Survey. In the backdrop of current protests against the central farm laws, the Survey noted that these reforms were, in fact, recommended many times in the past 20 years but could not see the light of day till September last year. Union Budget 2021-22: Complete coverageIt said the move would now enable creation of ‘One India, One Market’ for agriculture products and create innumerable opportunities for farmers to move up the value chain in food processing — from farm to fork, create jobs and increase incomes. “The reforms in agricultural sector were more overdue than even the labour reforms as the existing laws kept the Indian farmer enslaved to the local ‘mandi’ and their rent-seeking intermediaries. While every other category of producer in India had the freedom to decide where to sell his/her produce, the Indian farmer did not,” said the survey in the context of the new law on agri-market which seeks to provide farmers choice to sell produce outside the state-regulated ‘mandis’. The pro-reform lobby has read the interests of “arthiyas (intermediaries)” as a significant factor in the protests since they have the most to lose. Referring to APMC markets, the survey said local monopolists created by this legal infrastructure enabled the intermediaries to prosper at the cost of the farmer, especially the poor ones without the wherewithal to store their produce. “The three agricultural reform legislations are designed and intended primarily for the benefit of small and marginal farmers which constitute around 85% of the total number of farmers and are the biggest sufferers of the regressive APMC regulated market regime,” it said.

The Times of India

2021-01-30

Business