Punjab farmers back to the fields after winding up their year-long agitation.
There’s been too much of surround sound on Punjab, especially during — and now even after — the farm agitation. And that surround sound by propagandists bends the line between reality and fantasy.
But I try to look at the quiet byways of the state. I try to hear its rural voices.
DON’T WRITE OFF THE BADALS
Dec 15: And a political reality dawned on me while we were having our meals at a highway eatery, Kashmiri Dhaba, run by a Punjabi Hindu gentleman along Majari village.
“Sir, the Congress is a divided house. The Captain and his friends in the BJP want to divide the people. The Aam Aadmi Party has no (CM) face till now. Who is the most organised then?” the dhaba owner asked in chaste Punjabi, looking at us through his dilapidated kitchen as he fried the lentils.
Farmers gather to mark the first anniversary of their protests on the outskirts of Delhi at Pakora Chowk near Tikri border, India, November 26, 2021.
India’s repeal of agriculture laws aimed at deregulating produce markets will starve its vast farm sector of much-needed private investment and saddle the government with budget-sapping subsidies for years, economists said.
Late last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced three laws meant to open up agriculture markets to companies and attract private investment, triggering India’s longest-running protest by farmers who said the reforms would allow corporations to exploit them.
With an eye on a critical election in populous Uttar Pradesh state early next year, Modi agreed to rescind the laws in November, hoping to smooth relations with the powerful farm lobby which sustains nearly half the country’s 1.3 billion people and accounts for about 15% of the $2.7 trillion economy.
But by shelving the most ambitious overhaul in decades, Modi’s backtracking now seemingly rules out much-needed upgrades of the creaky post-harvest supply chain to cut wastage, spur crop diversification, and boost farmers’ incomes, economists said.
“This is not good for agriculture, this is not good for India,” said Gautam Chikermane, a senior economist and vice president at New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.
“All incentives to shift towards a more efficient, market-linked system (in agriculture) have been smothered.”
The u-turn does allay farmers’ fears of losing the minimum price system for basic crops, which growers say guarantees India’s grain self-sufficiency.
“It appears the government realised that there’s merit in the farmers’ argument that opening up the sector would make them vulnerable to large companies, hammer commodities prices and hit farmers’ income,” said Devinder Sharma, a farm policy expert who has supported the growers’ movement.
