Farmers Movement Archive

‘Private players in agriculture sector to spell disaster for farmers’: Shivanand Tiwary

PATNA: Even as PM Narendra Modi on Saturday exhorted the state governments to create space for the big and expanded role of the private sector in their respective domains, political parties of all ideological hues on Sunday appeared in agreement that the central government was pushing for the bigger role of the private players in the state’s agriculture sector in the backdrop of the three contentious farm laws. PM Modi had raised the issue at the Niti Aayog governing council meeting, which was attended by the CMs, including Nitish Kumar. As to Bihar, this amounted to making space for private sector mostly in the agricultural and allied activities, as well as in service sector, as the investment in the big industries was unlikely to happen due to several problems. However, the ruling and opposition parties were at variance as to the fallout of the engagement of the private sector in the agriculture and allied activities like farming, fishery, dairy and makhana cultivation for export. “Nitish seems to suggest that the abolition of the APMC Act had infused competitive edge among the farmers. It is not the abolition of the APMC Act, but the natural volition of the farmers after the introduction of green revolution since 1969 to adopt new ways of production — use of tractors and mechanized farming, high yield variety seeds, new ways of farming, fertilizers and pesticides — to produce more. Even today, they are not getting returns on their crops at the MSP. The corporates have been freed from it,” RJD senior Shivanand Tiwary said. “The entry of big players in the agricultural sector will spell disaster for the farmers. They will be at the mercy of the corporates after entering an agreement with them,” Tiwary said, adding that it was for this reason that his party had been supporting the farmers’ agitation against the three farm laws. Senior Congress functionary Prem Chandra Mishra said the entry of the corporates in the farm sector will “not be good, as it will put all the liability of the corporates into the hands of the farmers and also jeopardize their ownership on the land”. The CPI(ML), CPI and CPM functionaries — Kunal, Ram Babu Kumar and Arun Kumar Mishra, respectively — felt that the greatest fear among the farmers even in Bihar was that they might lose their land to the corporates. “The Bihar farmers have been at a loss since the abolition of the APMC Act in 2006. Today, the farmers of the more developed areas — Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh — have been most vocal in their protests against the farm laws. But when the grim reality will sink in, the Bihar farmers will also join them in a big way,” Kunal said. As to the love of the Bihar farmers for the land they owned, Ram Babu described a peculiar situation that occurred under the Samyukt Vidhayak Dal (SVD) government led by Karpoori Thakur in 1967. The SVD government announced to abolish the ‘malgujari’ (land tax) to ease their burden. “But the farmers opposed it tooth and nail. They thought that it was the only thing that showed their ownership on the land. They felt its abolition will ultimately lead to the deprivation of land from them. Today also, they fear that the corporates will deprive them of their land once the three farm laws are implemented,” he said.

The Times of India

2021-02-22

Patna