What India’s Farmers Want You To Know

By Ruby Kaur

The protests have evolved into a well-organised system. Meals are cooked in community kitchens and shared following the principles of langar. Photo by Naveen Macro.

“You should try to spend one night outside in the cold and rain; then you will know that no one sits in protest for months without reason,” said Tej Singh, speaking to me over the phone from his hometown Nathewala in Punjab. Singh is one of the nearly 300,000  farmers who have been protesting three agriculture reform bills introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in September 2020. Singh, who already supplements his agricultural income by driving a taxi, believes that these reforms pose a threat to his future in farming.

To protect that future, Tej Singh has been attending local protests and sit-ins against the bills since June 2020, when they were first introduced as ordinances by the Union Cabinet. “First we protested at [the local MP’s] town, then we sat at toll plazas and on railway tracks. But no one listened. So we went to Delhi,” he said, explaining the months-long buildup to the protests in the national capital.

To give their voice a national stage, farmers from the states of Punjab and Haryana drove their tractors to New Delhi in late November. Authorities met them with violence, even digging up roads to prevent access to the capital. “In Haryana, they tried to stop us. They had water cannons and threw tear gas at us,” said Sarvan Singh, a 65-year-old farmer from Nainokot, Punjab. Facing opposition to their dissent, farmers have been camped out on three main arteries on the outskirts of the national capital since.

To sustain the protests, they have developed a rotation system by which groups of farmers take turns to attend the protests.This also allows them to tend to their crops and family matters back home. So far, both Sarvan Singh and Tej Singh have made multiple trips to Delhi. Tej Singh even offers his taxi as free transportation to other farmers travelling to and from Delhi. 

The protests now consist of farmers and farm labourers from around the country. Battling harsh temperatures, rain and government crackdowns, they are prepared to stay in Delhi until the bills are repealed.

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So what exactly are they protesting? The agriculture reforms of 2020 consist of three separate pieces of legislation: Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. In September 2020, these bills were put to a voice vote in the Rajya Sabha or the upper house of the Indian Parliament. The bills were passed even though members of the opposition party, who make up just under two thirds of the upper house, protested and disputed the vote. 

The first bill proposes phasing out state markets known as ‘mandis’ in an effort to privatise the sector. In theory, the suspension of the mandi system is meant to protect farmers from middlemen and corrupt agents, while giving them greater freedom to negotiate directly with buyers. But farmers argue that mandis are part of a centralised system, which eliminates the need for them to navigate complicated contracts. Most farmers in India farm on less than two acres of land, giving them limited leverage in legal matters. Besides, despite the flaws in their functioning, mandis employ labourers and also serve as an informal support system for farmers. “Mandis are our banks,” said Sarvan Singh. “Arthiyas [or commission agents] give us advances and loans even in bad crop years.”

The mandi system adds further protection through an MSP or minimum support price. Through the MSP, the government offers a minimum price guarantee for essential crops such as wheat and rice. In an unregulated market without MSP, farmers fear that large corporations will dominate markets, setting low prices that would extort farmers. Tej Singh explains his fears with the example of the state of Bihar, where MSP was repealed in 2006. “The wheat we sell for Rs. 2,000 per hundred kilograms sells for Rs. 600 in Bihar. The same thing is going to happen here.” 

Most concerning is Section 13 of the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, which gives blanket immunity to officials and corporations by prohibiting legal proceedings against any actions “done in good faith.” Effectively, it would strip farmers of what little recourse they had in a court of law. Tej Singh voices his fears about the implications of this legislation: “Anyone [would be able to] buy from us, negotiate with us and we have no guarantee. What if the buyer cheats us? What protection do we have?” In December, the Bar Council of Delhi echoed these concerns in a press release, stating that “[farmers] will not get justice in regard to any dispute raised on any issues as the Jurisdiction of Civil Court is barred.”

The second bill, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, creates a national framework for contract farming without protections for farmers. Buyers will be able to create agreements with farmers regarding price, quantity and quality of crop before seeds are even sown. Contracts often pit small scale farmers without legal access against large buyers in a lopsided arrangement.

Such agreements are not new to India. Both Tej Singh and Sarvan Singh have experienced the pitfalls of contract farming first hand. In 2017, Tej Singh had planted basmati rice in his seven acre farm in contract with Punjab MarkFed, the official procurement agency for Punjab state. When it was time to sell, his crop was refused on the basis of quality. “We did everything the way they asked, yet they backed out,” he said, explaining that small farmers like himself are helpless when large-scale farmers offer bribes to secure their contracts. After 2017, he has not been contracted again. 

Sarvan Singh still farms sugarcane on contract with a sugar mill, just as he has done for the last 15 years. “First they get us hooked by offering us a lollipop, an incentive like higher prices, and then we are stuck and can’t leave,” he said. For the first few years of his contract, he received timely payments for his five acres of crop. But a few years later, the payments started to be delayed. “Now payments equaling Rs 300,000 (about $4,000) are delayed by two years,” he said. Yet, he hasn’t managed to extricate himself from the system, as sugarcane is not part of the government mandi system, and his soil is not well suited to other crops.

Contract disputes and negation practices disproportionally affect small-scale farmers that cannot leverage with quantity, further adding to their debts. Spiralling debt has been closely tied to a suicide crisis among India’s agriculture community. According to statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2019 alone, 10,281 farmers and farm labourers died by suicide nationwide. For years, farmers have been fighting for more regulations and protections to be put in place for contract farming. Instead of addressing these new concerns, the second farm bill threatens to further deregulate the field and serve corporate interests.

The final bill reclassifies certain produce such as cereals, potatoes and onions as non-essential. This new designation removes existing regulations on hoarding, instead allowing for unlimited stockpiling. Farmers fear that corporations will be able to procure crops at low costs, then store and limit their supply to raise market costs. Small-scale farmers cannot afford to rival corporations by building cold storage facilities. Instead, they fear that they will have to pay premium prices for basic goods that they themselves have grown.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers and farm labourers are camped out on the outskirts of New Delhi. In sheer numbers, the camps resemble informal cities. Photo by Naveen Macro.

For farmers already struggling with climate change and the damaging aftermath of the Green Revolution, these bills pose a combined affront. In the 1960s, famine and crop shortages created a national food deficit. To address the problem, the Indian government partnered with American agricultural experts to introduce new hybrid, high-yielding seeds for wheat and rice. Farmers, especially in Punjab and Haryana, were pressured to use these new seeds, as well as mechanised harvest techniques and chemical fertilisers.

The Green Revolution served the purpose of feeding the country. In 1990, India produced 50 million metric tons of wheat, up over 700 percent from 6.46 million metric tons in 1951. Following the success of the Green Revolution, farmers were hailed as ‘annadata’, or providers. However, these reforms also extracted a commensurate cost. Hybrid seeds, while higher yielding, also require more irrigation, chemical fertilisers and pesticides than indigenous varieties. As a result, Punjab and Haryana have been left with falling water tables and degraded, chemical-laced soil. The pressure to fulfill grain needs reduced crop rotation, further burdening soils and contributing to polluting practises such as stubble burning.

In the aftermath of the Green Revolution, India is in urgent need of agricultural reform that protects its environment and its farmers. However, farmers say that the new farm bills ignore these pressing needs, and instead seek to pander to corporate interests.

Physical barriers such as barbed wire have been used to isolate protest sites. Photo by Naveen Macro

Recognizing the dangers to the future of farming, farmers have vowed to camp in Delhi indefinitely. Their camps resemble informal cities. Tractor trolleys and tents house hundreds of thousands of protestors. Food is cooked in community kitchens and shared following the Sikh tradition of langar. There are free laundromats, schools, libraries, and even a publishing office for Trolley Times, a trilingual newspaper circulated in Punjabi, Hindi and English. Stages have been erected throughout to uplift spirits through song and speeches.

The images and stories of the protests make it easy to conflate them to a festival. After all, many Indian festivals such as Lohri, Vaishakhi, Onam and Pongal also have their origins in harvests and the farming tradition. But for farmers, these protests are a fight for their livelihoods.

They have been met not just with physical barriers such as barbed wire, but also with other tactics meant to silence and isolate them. For instance, internet services were suspended from January 29 to February 2 to silence dissent and limit access to the media. Nodeep Kaur, a 23-year old Dalit labour rights activist from Punjab, spent almost two months in jail following her arrest on January 12 from the protest site, before being released on bail on February 27. Her fellow activist Shiv Kumar remains in jail. Her fellow activist Shiv Kumar remains in jail. She is joined by hundreds of other farmers, some as old as 80, who were arrested on sedition charges.

Yet, the protest is showing no signs of slowing down or losing steam. Mass rallies led by farm leaders and farm unions continue to draw large crowds. On February 21, a rally in Barnala, Punjab drew over 100,000 people. “People are sitting on the road because they are suffering. They want the government to listen,” said Tej Singh.

 It is time we listened too.