Reforming Indian agriculture and the rise of farmer's protest in India: Tracing the discourse and the way ahead

• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Author: Adnan Shakeel,Mohd. Sadiq Salman,Tasneem Shazli,Hasan Raja Naqvi,Masood Ahsan Siddiqui
• Date: 01 February 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2847

COMMENTARY

Reforming Indian agriculture and the rise of farmer's protest

in India: Tracing the discourse and the way ahead

Adnan Shakeel | Mohd. Sadiq Salman | Tasneem Shazli | Hasan Raja Naqvi |

Masood Ahsan Siddiqui

Department of Geography, Faculty of Natural

Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

Correspondence

Adnan Shakeel, Department of Geography,

Faculty of Natural Science, Jamia Millia Islamia,

New Delhi, India.

Email: ashakeel1@jmi.ac.in

The Indian government unveiled new farm legislation on September 27, 2020, with

the goal of empowering the farming community. According to the government, new

farm regulations will reduce the reliance of indigenous farmers on the mandi (market

yard) system, which is now in place and is quite exploitative and full of middlemen

and legal cartels. The regulations made contract farming lawful with the intention of

luring private sector investment in bolstering agricultural supply chains and infra-

structure to give farmers better pricing. But these rules are referred to as repressive

and anti-farmer by the farming community. Farmers believe that eliminating the

mandi system will eliminate the minimum support price (MSP) mechanism and that

contract farming will ultimately be damaging, enticing major corporations and private

investors to bind them to unfair contracts that will result in exploitation. Farmers'

demonstrations have begun as a result in the former territory of the green revolution.

In order to determine if the new farm regulations introduced by the central govern-

ment are indeed beneficial to the rural community or not, the article followed the

debate among many academics, policy makers, economists, researchers, stakeholders,

and politicians (the government's spokesman). The article's main focus is on analysing

the farmers' demand for the new farm rules to be repealed and the economic justifi-

cation for their opposition. Additionally, it contends that new farm rules will encour-

age capitalistic farming and endanger the viability of farming communities,

particularly small and marginal farms (S&M).

KEYWORDS

agricultural capitalism, contract farming, farmer's protest, minimum support price (MSP),

neoliberalism, new farm laws

1|INTRODUCTION

The most contentious, divisive, and deliberative topics among farmers,

policymakers, stakeholders, traders, and politicians are the Agriculture

Reform Acts-2020 (farm laws). After being eventually signed by the

President of India on September 27, 2020, the two ordinances that

the Union Government had submitted to the parliament during the

monsoon session of year 2020 became Acts, and the third Act under-

went some revisions. The Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce

(Promotion and Facilitation) Act-2020 (FPTCA) is the first act, and it is

intended to promote intra and interstate trade and commerce without

barriers, particularly outside the actual boundaries of ‘mandis’(market

yards) that have been pre-approved by the Agricultural Produce Mar-

keting Committee (APMC) under the APMC model Act 1955. With

the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price

Assurance and Farm Services Act-2020 (FAPAFSA), the second act,

farmers will be able to contract with customers or traders to receive a

higher and predetermined price for their agricultural products. In Pun-

jab, contract farming was originally instituted at the state level with

the goal of enticing farmers to switch from the traditional wheat-

paddy cycle to more diverse agriculture (Chaba, 2020a). Last but not

least, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 (ECA)

Received: 3 March 2021 Revised: 30 September 2022 Accepted: 21 October 2022

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2847

J Public Affairs. 2023;23:e2847. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of14

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2847