Do The Farm Laws Benefit The Farmers?

This government has no good track record of implementing successful national polices take a look at the state of

Demonetisation
NEET
GST
and now the Farm Bill

 

This 'farmer standing up against corporate power' rhetoric is all fine and dandy on a placard, press meet or as a political slogan. In reality, everyone is part of the chain. Why, I grow some stuff but I as a consumer would want an electronic good at a cheaper rate; if someone at the lower rungs can't sustain in that, then they have to move to other better prospects of making money.

A construction laborer makes 500 a day easily - 12500 per month with holidays. A farmer with a 2 acre land growing crops doesn't have an assured income like that while easily doing double the labor load. Either he has to double or triple his yield/ha or get out of the business.

Then the actual reversal of fragmentation of land holding will start - through contract/lease/purchase. Collective tillage and corporate farming. This is the way forward to remove misery; a working model.

 

Governments all over the world protect their vulnerable population, lot of countries around the world have laws to protect the farmland and the farmers, the argument that if there are fools there will be people who are ready to fool those people, e.g people who do financial crime and escape without any punishment, if you allow these things to flourish in the society then there will be only anarchy in this society. This government is not interested in protecting the weak and vulnerable they are only interested in making sure the wealthy people are flourishing and able to support them in re-election.

 

APMC Act has lot of restrictions on who can buy farm products, this is a very old law and it’s time to get rid of it or make changes.
Agricultural produce market committee - Wikipedia

 

This the current state of India, if you don’t protect this major segment of people it will create an major problem in the society.


Agriculture, with its allied sectors, is the largest source of livelihoods in India. 70 percent of its rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, with 82 percentof farmers being small and marginal. In 2017-18, total food grain production was estimated at 275 million tonnes (MT).

India at a glance | FAO in India | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

 

India should adopt the US method of giving massive subsidies to farmers. The bulk of it here is grabbed by corporate and large-scale outfits but the small growers also benefit.

 

I grow cash crops and sell them to middle men/brokers. I get paid in cash or i get a direct bank transfer from the corporates themselves (after which i pay the commission to the intermediate). Food crops don't enjoy this luxury; scalded myself many a times before giving up on it.

Small farm owners produce too little and they will be paid less. In case of large area, say if i grow orange tender coconuts and I grow a truck full of it, I am the boss - implying, vendors compete to secure the order and I can demand the price fixed by farmers association (or even more, if the quality is good).

Implying, small farm owners are at a loss in either system. They don't have the protection of the association. they work themselves too much during the entire daylight and earn a pittance. But this small farmer is like the conditioned Indian wife who comes to IL and says 'my husband physically abused me, I don't know what to do' and after n replies of 'stand up, walk out, be financially independent' it isn't processed but going back to the same pathetic life and continuing to do what the farmer/wife did all this time and be at the mercy of prayers/planets.

Consider the free market theory: your produce will fetch a price only if it's in demand. What's the point of growing the same stuff, getting historic low prices, not having the volume to bargain and to keep doing it again and again expecting for that miracle?

The second post is the answer to your first. With such a large population, how much can any government support? It's analogous to the west/Japan where there's going to be a lot of elderly on pension except that there's not enough young tax payers to support that. To steal from what the coffers are filled by taxing other sectors and to keep placating this farming class voters is what's happening.

Economics is what governs, money drives us. And the GDP of India be split as : Services 50%, manufacturing 25%, agriculture 16% - thus taking farmers out of small acreage farming and putting them in other sector is doing them and the country a favor - to capitalize on cheap labor just like China did in 1990s to turn into a manufacturing powerhouse.

To keep placating the status quo also has a peril: it keeps the population of India exploding - it's rural India which reproduces at highter than TFR; urban India focuses on quality of life and ensuring 1/2 kids. Rural voters are easily swayed with liquor and food; those who are conditioned to sustain on even African Savannah like conditions don't bother to think in the long term - and this is where politicians exploit to win an election. Educated urban voters can see through the empty promise of free tv and free everything with 'who pays' question; rural India pays no direct income tax; so for them whatever they get is a privilege. The main accusation against Congress is that: perpetuating poverty through socialism from independence till 1990 when the country was forced to globalize. What the current government is trying to do is to take the next step of what Rao did in the 1990s. It is inevitable or we will be stuck.

We have time till 2035 from when the young India is maturing into uncle/aunty India; implying the capitalizing on cheap labor should happen before that. So the next decade and a half will decide whether India becomes an industrial economy like East Asia(China included), or goes full sub-saharan Africa.

India doesn't have the money printing machine like the US, isn't it. Can print all they want and the rest of the world is there to support/bear it, us third worlders don't have such privileges : )

 

Thats why governments all over the world invest in food processing industry and export the processed food.

If population is the problem then the government should concentrate on controlling the population growth.

This is how Indian government is functioning tax the rich states and get give the tax money to underdeveloped states and those states use the money to build cow sheds and erect multi million $ statues

Uttar Pradesh government approves setting up corpus for cow shelters

The total cost of the project was estimated to be about ₹2,063 crore (equivalent to ₹27 billion or US$370 million in 2019) by the government

Statue of Unity - Wikipedia.

When you make short term policies to gain votes then you have to face the consequences.

But India is on the top 100 when it comes to corruption if it controls that then it can buy lot of money printing machines.

India Corruption Rank | 1995-2019 Data | 2020-2022 Forecast | Historical | Chart