Author: Sebastian Anaya, student of the MS on Environmental Policy and Sustainability

Management - [email protected]

India China Institute - The New School

Unprecedented peasants’ harvest: mobilization against neoliberalism in India

“The system of procurement (support our farmers) and system of distribution (support to our
consumers) in India is like walking on two legs”.

Madhura Swaminathan, 2019

Source: Dr. Vijoo Krishnan, joint secretary of AIKS

Abstract

December 11, 2021, was a day of celebration for India's peasant movement. Up to that point,
a social mobilization involving millions of people had kept New Delhi on lockdown for a
year through encampments, marches, and a vast repertoire of nonviolent civil disobedience,
which echoed throughout India, especially in the northern states. The trigger was the attempt
by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make three legal amendments
seeking to deepen deregulatory and free-market policies in the food chain (production,
marketing, and distribution) through the Indian Parliament, arrogating to itself functions that
are highly questionable as to their constitutionality. This essay will briefly address the
historical context of public policies in the agricultural sector in India, highlighting the
particular evolution of the role played by the state to analyze the tensions that the neoliberal
model has deepened, within which are framed both the reform attempts of the current
government and the massive response of rural sectors. Similarly, the voices of some leaders
of the peasant strike are presented, who reflect on the economy, the social protest between
2020 and 2021, and the current political landscape under the Modi government and the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Keywords

Farmers’ strike, minimum support price, neoliberalism, agricultural policy, India.

Preliminary notes

This text has two primary purposes. First, it will provide relevant historical and socio-
economical context and analysis of the structures and conditions that led to the historical
farmers’ strike in November 2020 amidst the COVID pandemic. Second, it pretends to
assemble different voices of key leaders of the strike and the social movements who were
part of the struggle, to understand the dynamics behind it. They address the following
questions: What were the backgrounds and foundations of such a mobilization? Was it
spontaneous, or did it require an enormous effort to prepare? How did the social
organizations interpret the three proposed amendments by Modi’s government?

The document is divided into two parts which complement each other to have a
comprehensive insight into the people’s will that jeopardized the neoliberal, nationalist, and
authoritarian project of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India.

For the construction of this text, the primary sources of information consisted of interviews
with social leaders who participated in the strike, scholars who have studied the Indian
agricultural sector, focus groups with peasants in Northern India, as well as the analysis of
books and articles about the mobilization itself and the historical and economic situation in
India. In addition, several laws, decrees, and official documents produced by the Union
government were consulted, including the Indian constitution. The secondary sources were
reports and journal articles from social organizations and scholars. As a side note, there were
some obstacles regarding the availability of updated and detailed public information
including interviewing government officials.

PART I. What is the authentic taste of Indian foodgrains?’

Introduction

In 2020, India's Union Government tried to change a regulated food production and
commercialization system, giving more capacity and influence to the private sector. It ignited
a series of farmers' protests throughout the country, who demanded President Narendra Modi
repeal the laws by marching to New Delhi, camping in three sites on its outskirts, and
blocking strategic highways for more than a year. Even though most of those who marched to
the capital were from the northern states of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh (where most
wheat and rice are produced), farmers from other states repeatedly demonstrated in solidarity.
As farmers mobilized, blocked crucial roads linking Delhi to other cities, and camped for
almost a year at various points on the capital's outskirts, several talks were held but were yet
to reach substantial agreements. The ultimate success of the strike was the result of social
pressure from a diverse movement in terms of the professed religion, geographical origin, and
professional background of those who mobilized.

Text's Part II will provide a historical context on how food production was relevant in the
consolidation of the Indian nation-state. Particular emphasis will be placed on the birth and
development of rural institutions focused on the production, marketing, and distribution of
agricultural products, up to the current tension between a protectionist system, with a leading
role of the state, and a neoliberal economy embraced by Indian political elites. This will
provide the context for a brief exposition of the legal amendments that generated the social
mobilization and, above all, a closer look at the enriching reflections of AIKS leaders.

1. Agricultural practices and rural institutions

In South Asia, the earliest human settlements with complex systems of social organization
(I.e., Harappa) date from around 2300 BCE, and were built on river banks in northern India,
preceding the arrival of the Aryan people. Since those times, there has been evidence that
wheat and rice were the basis of their food and a crucial part of their economic exchange with
Sumerians (Wolpert, 2000).

Some centuries after, the heart of the territorial occupation process by the Aryan people
(coming from Persia and Cappadocia) was called the Land of the Five Rivers (Punjab), from
where they advanced southbound for centuries, crossing forests, conquering nature,
subjugating, or erasing local indigenous tribes (Pant, 2013). However, the idea of India, as it
is now, was built between the fifth and eighth centuries of the current era, when physical
barriers between North and South were breached by the Guptas and the Vakatakas to trade
and exchange goods, beliefs, and ancient practices (Pant, 2013).

The Delhi Sultanate, who ruled northern India between ca. 1206 and 1526 CE, represented
the consolidation of an Indian ethos of highly cultivated and irrigated territory and
diversification of crops and ingredients to form the origin of Indian cuisine (Jackson, 1999).
For example, Sultan Firuz Shah (who reigned from 1351 to 1388) is remembered as the father
of spreading irrigation canals throughout India (Wolpert, 2000). Furthermore, it was during
this period when grains were recognized as vital for the economic viability of the Sultanate
and food security (first for rulers and their armies). They became a cornerstone of the taxation
system (Kharāj) since cultivators had to pay up to 50% of their income in cash or grain. In
preparation for famines, significant grains were stored in the Sultan's reserves in the capital
(Jackson, 1999). One of the most crucial policies from the Sultanate was price control over
essential items, such as rice, wheat, wax, fruits, horses, and livestock. It fixed maximum
prices and involved a complex system of merchants, cultivators, registrations, certificates,
penalties, and new institutions (Jackson, 1999).

Despite the enormous scale of the Delhi Sultanate and the later Mughal Empire, at a local
level, it continued to exist and function as governing institutions such as ¨panchayat¨
(Hullepa, 2016), with variations according to the local context. This term refers to an
assembly of respected elders who carried out government and justice tasks. During the
expansion and consolidation of the economic presence of the British Empire in the Indian
Territory (17th and 18th centuries), multiple systems of land tenure (with different
relationships according to who worked the land and who owned it) and its agricultural
production obeyed dynamics determined by the ecological context (Howard, 1982).
According to Stokes (1978), quoted by Howard (1982), a type of proto-capitalism based on
wheat had been consolidated in central India.

Under the British government, the first regulations on specific products, such as cotton, were
established, restricting its commercialization in designated places and with the existence of
committees that would supervise operations (Wolpert, 2000). The geographical expansion of
this modality led to what is known as the mandi system, which refers to market yards where
highly regulated products are traded. According to Walters (2021), before independence,
experiences such as that of Punjab, where the Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets Act was
enacted, served as a model for the creation of the Agricultural Produce Market Committees
(APMC) that exist today and which in turn are the basis of the mandi system. In this context,
under which the aim was to facilitate and bring closer the regulated physical spaces for
farmers to sell their products, positions such as those of the arhtiyas, who facilitate
transactions between producers and buyers (a role similar to that of a broker), also arose.

After independence, Mahatma Gandhi was an advocate of re-establishing at a national scale

the Panchayati system as the basic level of government as opposed to a highly centralized
government from Delhi (Singh, 2003). As expected, the current form of panchayat is different
from the ancient form and responds to more recent administration, decentralization, and
modernization debates. Thus, they are defined as units of self-government that must be
recognized and endowed with authority according to India’s Constitution of 1950 (40th
Article).

In 1957, rural reforms known as Panchayati Raj were proposed to strengthen local
government when the reorganization of land tenure systems was being discussed (Singh,
2003). Hence, in the upcoming years, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal passed
new legislation to enact panchayats (Hullepa, 2016). Concerning the agricultural sector,
between the 1950s and 1970s, several states passed laws known as the Agricultural Produce
Marketing Regulation Act, adopting similar models regarding the regulation of the marketing
of primary agricultural products (Walters, 2021).
At the beginning of the 1960s, India suffered a severe famine, which put additional pressure
on the national government to implement rural institutional reform and large-scale land
redistribution (Cedar, 2012). As a consequence, alongside land access policies were others of
economic nature, such as expanding agricultural education, nationalizing strategic assets, and
pouring money from banks into this sector. The State of Rajasthan was a pioneer in
implementing the Panchayat Raj system with different levels of bottom-up association and
governance (Panchayati Samiti and Zila Parishad), which was followed by other states. This
was crucial for guaranteeing the success of the five-year plans of Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru (who ruled between 1947 - 1964) to improve agriculture yields and provide better
well-being for rural India (Wolpert, 2000).

During the following decades, several committees were appointed to develop suggestions to
improve rural life in the country and give nationwide scope to the panchayat system. In the
mid-60s, the Jha Committee produced a report establishing the Agricultural Prices
Commission’s establishment. In 1965, the government funded the Food Corporation of India
(FCI), a crucial institution for food procurement. While experts were trying to balance the
agricultural cost of production, producer, and consumers’ interests, during the 70s and the 80s
other relevant plans and programs were implemented to address rural poverty, such as the
Marginal Farmer and Agricultural Labour Scheme (resources and inputs for small and
marginal farmers), or the operation of the Small Farmer Development Agency (Cedar, 2012).
In 1985, the still-standing Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) was
redesigned to define on an annual basis Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for primary
agricultural products, “below which market prices cannot fall” (Malamasuri et al., 2013). It is
noticeable that the MSP was generally lower than international prices (Chand, 2005).

According to Swaminathan (2019), during the period of universalization of the Public

Distribution System (PDS) - mid-1960s to mid-1990s-, two essential components of food
security were comprehensively addressed, which are food production and food distribution
(with the primacy of food grains). According to this author, the following were the objectives
of the system:

● “Maintaining price stability

● Increasing the welfare facilities for the poor
● Rationing during situations of scarcity
 ● Keeping a check on private trade”.

It is crucial to highlight two contemporary dynamics that framed this glimpse into some
critical changes in India’s agricultural sector institutions. First, the 1960s and 1970s famines
posed a significant challenge to the Indian government, and the Indian soil served as a
laboratory for what was called the Green Revolution. This global dynamic consisted of
creating procedural (legal, political) and technological conditions for a substantial increase in
food crop productivity growth, in which wheat, maize, and rice crops played a leading role.
Although the green revolution is not the subject of this paper, it is worth noting that, overall,
there was an increase in agricultural production that was partly due to crop germplasm
improvements, which had positive impacts on reducing food prices and reducing global
poverty to some extent (Pingali, 2012). However, this “revolution” has been widely
questioned by rural social movements and environmentalists, according to which the Global
North “supplanted ecologically sustainable agricultural practices and fostered dependence
on agricultural inputs manufactured by Northern transnational corporations” (Gonzalez,
2016). This subordination was based on the commercialization of seeds, pesticides,
fertilizers, and machinery.

Second, during the second half of the Twentieth century, significant portions of the Global
South were immersed in a protectionist process characterized by import substitution
industrialization and nationalization of essential goods and assets. In general terms, the
former refers to a trade measure consisting of supplying imports with domestic production,
either agricultural products or industrial goods. The latter is the process upon which essential
services (e.g., electricity, water supply) that privates owned are assumed or owned by the
state. According to Wolpert (2000), since the 1930s, former Prime Minister Nehru had
advocated centralized economic planning and nationalized vital industries. Effectively, India
went in that direction until the 80s, the decade that shaped neoliberalism as a civilizational
project.

2. Neoliberalism and developmentalism

According to Adelman (2017), after independence, India’s trajectory has evidenced an

accelerated attempt to modernize and industrialize the country through a state-driven process,
which, in general terms, shows a linear understanding of development. According to
Chakrabarty (2000), cited by Marwah (2019), ¨this developmental logic “posited historical
time as a measure of the cultural distance...assumed to exist between the West and the non-
West,” portraying the latter as farther down the civilizational ladder which all societies would
climb.¨ From postcolonial studies, a critique of the adoption of this type of discourse by
Marxist and nationalist movements has been highlighted, recognizing the contradictions that
this entails due to its unfailing relationship with colonial political ideals and epistemologies
(Marwah, 2019).

The early 1980s marked a turning point because ‘the so-called’ Washington consensus
promoted dogmatic market fundamentalism that demanded privatization, deregulation, and
free trade in pursuit of endless economic growth (Adelman, 2017). Neoliberalism was
imposed or implemented in Global South countries through policies promoted by the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the US Treasury. In exchange for loans
and financial aid, countries had to submit to structural adjustment plans, which usually
included the privatization of strategic state-owned assets, market and capital liberalization,
and fiscal discipline, among others.

It should be noted that the end of the import substitution industrialization model and state
protectionism of the economy would not have been possible without internal causes and
pressures from within the countries, whose economic elites saw an opportunity to increase
their accumulation under discourses of new governance and efficiency. In 1991, Prime
Minister Narasimha Rao and his Finance Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to implement
the neoliberalist recipe (Wolpert, 2000). As part of structural adjustment, they had to devalue
the rupee in June of 1991, which ‘raised the gap between MSP (domestic prices) and
international prices’ (Chand, 2005).

In addition, it should be noted that the adoption of neoliberalism in India at the beginning of
the 1990s has many other causes, among which stands out the following, according to Cedar
(2012):

• India’s forest exchange reserves plummeted.

• Oil prices skyrocketed during the 1970s and 1980s (India is not an oil producer
country).
• It lost vital export markets with the USSR’s disintegration.
• The increasing outflow of international capital investment.

Chand (2005), pointed out that, during the 1990s, the Union Government established some
concrete measures to face the negative social impacts of neoliberal policies regarding raising
food production and improving food availability, such as:

• Continuation of the MSP system through obligatory procurement by the Food

Corporation of India to assure floor prices to producers.
• Price stability through open market operations.
• Maintaining buffer stocks (mainly of grains).
• Use a Public Distribution System (PDS) of grains at reasonable prices to achieve food
security.

An example of the immediate negative impacts of neoliberalism are the PDS reforms carried
out under the mantra of efficiency. From a system with high economic costs that was
intended to universalize the guarantee of food security, a system called “revamped PDS” or
“targeted PDS” was introduced in the 1990s. According to Swaminathan (2019), the central
government assumed much of the decision-making power over PDS allocations, targeting
households below the poverty line (BPL), which meant great discretion to exclude
households through the poverty line measurement. This author is emphatic in affirming that
there were severe exclusion errors, citing a 2005 government report in which she highlighted
that only 57% of BPL households were being covered (Swaminathan, 2019).

In addition, according to Angotti (2015), because of the shift in economic policy, one of the
most socially harmful gaps critically increased: the one between rural and urban areas in
terms of well-being and satisfaction of basic needs. The government prioritized investing in
urban spending and gradually defunded subsidies for rural areas while incrementing
panchayats’ responsibilities (Angotti, 2015). Within this context, the worsening of living
conditions in rural areas is directly proportional to the increasing urban challenges to
welcome domestic migrants and satisfy their needs. It is crucial to point out that in 1971,
according to official figures, 80.1% of India’s population lived in rural areas, but by 2011 the
figure had declined to 68.9% (Chand, 2021). Amid neoliberalism implementation in India,
Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) were redesigned through a constitutional amendment,
giving origin to a complex scheme of functions and levels of administration.
Despite some efforts and consistent pompous discourses to enable a functioning democratic
system, the foremost critics consist of a lack of financial resources to implement projects and
plans in rural India, which entails symbolic independence for the states and institutions such
as the panchayats that is far from being real (Bohra & Sharma, 2015). This consistent trend in
India’s agricultural policy, coupled with land tenure issues and food insecurity, shows how
there might be a deliberate worsening of rural living conditions in favor of people’s
displacement to urban areas. Some scholars have argued that colonialism and imperialism
operate between states (at an international level) and within them. Figueroa and Lindgren
(2016) pointed out how peripheral elites have been assimilated into a Western-centric
civilizational logics of endless accumulation, economic growth, and consumption drawing on
sub-imperial dynamics. In that case, it is pertinent to ask if the process of rural inhabitants’
deterritorialization in India responds to a neoliberal colonialist-inspired rationale. Here, it is
crucial to bring Scott’s (1995) notes about colonialism, according to which it is fundamental
to identify the ‘targets’ or spaces that colonialism seeks to organize based on historical
evidence. To what social and political projects do the emptiness of rural areas and the
establishment of powerless institutions serve?

It is worth mentioning the reflection of a farmer who participated in one of the focus groups I
conducted in northern India: “a farmer’s son, a farmer’s children, always wanted a regular
job, not farming because they feel like it is not getting benefited further in the future. So for
them, it is better if they go for government service. Simple. So they start preparing for that at
a young age. They take the exam and get selected to do a nine-to-five job”.

In conclusion, several reforms in the agricultural sector and rural areas have been putting
growing pressure on food security in India, where there is an ‘unintended’ but consistent
forced displacement from rural to urban areas, and food prices depend heavily on government
subsidies (such as the MSP). Moreover, due to the underfunding of the local level of
government after adopting neoliberal policies, several Indian states have had to partner with
the private sector to cover the basic needs of their population (Angotti, 2015), following the
trend of rising governance as a policy paradigm. As scholar Lucy Ford has stated, it was a
move ‘from traditional ‘command and control’ style policy to an increased privatization (…)
politics involving the private sector…’ (12).
 3. Minimum Support Prices policy and the legal amendments

According to Chand (2005), during the 90s, procurement prices (MSP) were raised at an
average rate of 11% per year for some products, outpacing inflation rates and systematically
ignoring the demand-side factor. Therefore, the Public Distribution System seemed less
attractive, and people gradually began to buy food grains from the open market. At some
point, 91% of the demand was met from the open market, which forced the government to
significantly raise the public stock of grains and augment the amount of money in subsidies
(by buying products through the MSP system) for producers (Chand, 2005). The gap between
international and open market prices and the MSP by which the government buys from
cultivators in India is steadily increasing, which must be addressed through legal and public
policy tools. Moreover, this is where the Modi government’s subscription to neoliberal
orthodoxy becomes evident.

Today, the prices of twenty-three top agricultural products are included in the MSP
mechanism. For millions of people whose basic needs’ satisfaction relies on MSP and PDS, a
change in the system that does not address other structural challenges discussed previously
might represent physical elimination, dying, and famine. Although sugarcane is India’s top
agricultural commodity currently (Finnin, 2016), it is necessary to highlight the continuity in
the relevance that grains such as rice and wheat have had for food security in India, especially
in times of crisis. These cereal crops have been historically the main targets of government
subsidies of seeds and fertilizers, contributing significantly to India’s trade surplus and
allowing it to be self-sufficient (Finnin, 2016).

In order to fully understand the context in which the Modi government proposed the legal
reforms, it is worth noting that India’s agrarian capitalism has been complexifying internally
and externally. On the one hand, there is the tangle of rural institutions, with a high
regulatory dispersion given its federal-state nature and diffuse roles given to the community
levels of government. On the other hand, in addition to the neoliberal dynamics of capital and
commodity flows, there are interwoven relationships with technological, financial, and
construction sectors, without which it would be difficult to understand such regulatory
changes. As Mani, Mody, Sukumar, and Harris-White (2019), 1 indicate, ‘capital takes root,
concentrates, centralizes and also diffuses and multiplies in the wider agrarian system without
the limitations of landed property control, both upstream of the landed-based stage (in
agricultural inputs) as well as downstream (in the post-harvest processes through which most
agricultural commodities reach consumers in an edible form)’. When reading the words of the
leaders of the peasant strike, it is suggested to consider the above conclusions on land
disentanglement and the complexity of the agrarian system, which is happening not only in
India.

On November 19, 2021, the Narendra Modi government announced that it would withdraw
from the Indian Parliament the three legislative initiatives that had catalyzed the discontent of
rural sectors that had suffered for years from the Prime Minister’s failure to fulfill his
campaign promises and whose resistance finally had a national scope. In recent years, Indian
farmers’ organizations have won important victories at the state level, such as the 2018 Kisan
Long March in Maharashtra, in which approximately 40,000 farmers marched 200 kilometers
to the city of Mumbai demanding and winning loan waivers, better remunerative prices,
among others (Dhawale, 2018). While the defeat of the Modi government is unprecedented
and a key success for those confronting his nationalist and neoliberal project, as can be read
in the words of leaders of the mobilization, farmers will continue to demand unresolved
structural issues and confront the imposition of anti-farmer measures through state legislative
assemblies.

In June 2020, amid the covid lockdown, Modi’s government introduced the three legal
reforms summarized below, which the Parliament passed in September 2020:

● The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act: allows
products to be traded outside the mandi system, substantially weakening the functions
of the APMCs by deregulating the producer-trader relationship. Although it
establishes some rules on transactions, it has a dispute settlement mechanism
(Conciliation Board) which hinders access to the judicial system for the weakest link
in the production chain, such as the peasant or rural worker.

● The Farm Services Act and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act: this
regulation amended the 1955 Essential Commodities Act, which imposed stock limits
and regulated the chain of critical products in different economic sectors such as
agriculture. Stock limits and price control allow the Indian State to act or regulate
agricultural products such as cereals, grains, and oilseeds, among others. However,
 the reform sought to limit the State’s capacity to regulate daily consumption products
such as onions, potatoes, and cereals, weakening de facto the PDS, as well as limiting
it to special situations such as famines or calamities, and declared actors such as
exporters as exempt from the stock limits. In short, the amendment weakened the
power to interfere in the regulation and, therefore, in the purchase and sale price of
these products.

● The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm
Services Act: On the one hand, it explicitly states that the Union Government may
issue guidelines on how these rules should be applied to the state governments, which
affects their autonomy and contradicts the provision of the Constitution, mentioned
above. On the other hand, in relation to contract farming, issues such as insurance,
quality of agricultural products, or prices to be agreed between the trader and the
farmer are detrimental to the weakest link in the chain. Regarding the latter, as Singh
Toor (2021) points out, “the price to be paid for the farmers’ produce will be
mentioned in the farming agreement. It will be based not on the MSP but on the price
prevalent in different markets and decided by electronic trading (...) It (...) seems that
the MSP has been abolished (....) According to Section 7 (2), the farm agreement will
not define the number of products that a trader can stock. He can stock as much
quantity as he wants. The government will have no control over him¨.

As a complement to the above and taking into account that it was one of the main concerns of
the farmers’ strike, it should be noted that none of the amendments mentioned the MSP
policy. Its defense is probably one of the most debated issues in India whenever new legal
reforms are proposed and is a point of honor for farmers’ organizations. In this regard, it is
worth mentioning the words of Shankar Singh, a farmer from Rajasthan whom I interviewed,
who stated that “...the MSP policy was established for the farmers which have larger areas to
grow. They grow the crops in a very high volume which live nearby Haryana or Punjab. So,
it was good for them but not for the poor farmer. The poor farmer cannot go directly to the
government to sell. There are many barriers for poor farmers (...) What happened is that the
government pushed certain rules that there will not be any mediators between the farmers
and the market. But in Haryana and Punjab, there are farmers that have large properties for
farming. So they grow a lot. There are so many brokers and so many intermediates in
between. So they did not want to remove them. So that’s why they were against the
government, but very honestly, if we look by the eye of a poor farmer, it was really good for
them. Because there were no mediators between the farmers and the market”.

Noteworthy, the leaders of the strike rightly mentioned that the most potent media matrix in
India, close to the Modi government, delegitimized the peasant mobilization with two main
messages. On the one hand, it was promising that the reforms would grant total freedom to
producers to set the conditions under which they would sell their products (freeing prices,
intermediation, strict rules on stock limits, and taxes). On the other hand, it affected the
legitimacy of the mobilization by emphasizing that it was the reaction of large landowners in
northern India, especially in the areas where most grains are produced, such as Punjab, Uttar
Pradesh, and Haryana. In one of the focus groups I conducted with farmers in northern India,
several participants were emphatic in their support of this view of amendments. One of them
stated that “...any farmer can sell out the crops across India anywhere, so that could be a
problem for those big farmers, who used to get the crops at a lower price. Understand that if
the poor farmer could reach out to the direct buyer across India, he will be able to get
benefited by much of the profit”.

From leaders’ words and those quoted in previous paragraphs, it is also clear that the form in
which the MSP is materialized, the public procurement of agricultural products through State
Government Agencies, has been in crisis, probably for decades. However, the peasant strike
was a new dispute in the long battle between those who advocate a more robust, better-
financed public system that effectively guarantees food security and respects the functional
autonomy of the states, and those who promote fiscal austerity, price liberalization, and a
smaller, more centralized state.

Shortly, the social organizations that led the strike will continue to exert pressure to prevent
their victory from being ignored by the state legislatures. Likewise, it is worth mentioning
that other demands still need to be resolved and are at the top of their mobilization agenda.
Among these, the following stand out:

● The recognition and the MSP strengthening under the C2 +50 formula. It means
including a more comprehensive understanding of the total crop cost (C2) and the
profit thereon at 50 percent.
● Expanded loan waiver programs.
 ● The dropping of criminal prosecution of those who were captured or convicted for
actions related to the strike.
● The conviction of state agents and their families who committed severe crimes against
protest participants.
● Truth, justice, and reparations for the families of the hundreds of people killed during
the strike.
● Reforms to laws related to electricity and land acquisition that seek to benefit low-
income rural dwellers.

Finally, I would like to bring two statements from farmers in Rajasthan that I interviewed, as
I believe that they reflect the feelings of rural people all over India about the farmers’ strike:

'Farmers are more aware now about things like insurance, health care, and pension. You
know all the issues they don’t have as farmers.'

'The farmers identify with the real unity. They realized what farmers can do and what unity
looks like across India when a group of farmers come together. The farmers on strike came
with multiple points that earlier farmers were not aware of, like increasing the minimum
income, pension scheme, and health insurance, and comparing the government employees,
non-government employees, and farmers'.

4. Conclusions

First, there is an urgent need to reform India's essential food commodities production,
marketing and distribution system. However, the approach and the logic behind the reforms
are the most critical area of dispute between peasant organizations and the national elites,
who have found in the Modi government the corporate and deregulatory model that most
favors them. All of the above results in the possibility of living with dignity in rural areas or
giving in to the option of moving to urban areas, where the minimum living standard is not
guaranteed.

Second, further evaluation of the PRI is necessary under democratic and anticolonial
parameters if rural well-being is the primary goal. If decentralization of political power is not
accompanied by fiscal, economic independence, and, especially, legitimacy, the current
Panchayat system is bound to fail. What is crucial is that the analysis must not be based on
simple vote counting or the contribution to economic growth as the main goal of such
institutions; it should acknowledge the limitations of managerial approaches in favor of
ancient practices, diverse forms of social organization and deliberation, and adivasi
knowledge, having small-scale landowners and landless people in the center of policy
recommendations.

Third, as Gustafson (2013) stated, 'The place to start in examining the impact of high and
volatile prices on food security is the recognition that crises hit the poor the hardest. The
greater the vulnerability, the greater the impact'. Climate change produces more severe
weather conditions and, therefore, is expected to impact food production in India negatively.
The government must consider this element in any proposal of changing MSP and PDS
policies, acknowledging the role that peasants, indigenous, and tribal people have had
historically in biodiversity conservation and nature restoration, as opposed to deepening the
developmentalism paradigm.

Fourth, the articulation of the political organizations that supported the strike was
strengthened, which will continue to pressure the government not to try to circumvent the
outcome of the strike by pushing the amendments through the state legislatures. As
mentioned by strike leaders and farmers in the focus groups, further reforms should also
focus on addressing water scarcity and quality, land degradation, and ensuring access to land
for millions of landless.

PART II. Voices from the picket line

In 2022, I sat down and talked with four social leaders of the peasant movement who
mobilized against Modi’s ‘anti-farmers laws. They are part of All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS),
translated as ‘All India Peasant Union’, a farmers’ faction of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist)- CPIM. In 1920, the Communist Party of India was founded, aiming to
internationalize and strengthen anti-imperialist patriotism, non-violence civil disobedience,
land reforms, and social justice for lower castes (Prasad, 2014). By the end of 1964, tensions
between different approaches to marxism led to the foundation of the CPIM as a separate
political organization. Nowadays, they have approximately one million affiliates and are part
of the Left Democratic Front, which governs the southern state of Kerala (CPIM, 2021).

Dr, Vijoo Krishnan (VK) is the Joint Secretary of AIKS. Sanjay Madhav (SJ) is a farmer,
leader of AIKS in Rajasthan and was designated as convener of the Morcha (demonstration),
blocking the interstate between Maharashtra (Mumbai) and New Delhi, probably the most
critical highway in India. Advocate Rajesh Singhvi (AR) is one of the most prominent leaders
of the CPIM in Rajasthan, and he is the son of Mr. Banshi Lal Singhvi, who served as the
district secretary of CPIM for nearly 50 years and passed away in 2016. Finally, Dr.
Mohanakumar S. (DM) is the director of the Institute of Development Studies in Jaipur,
India, and is also part of the CPIM.

Below, the first section will show how social leaders have understood and interpreted the
complex context faced by rural India, which provided the context for both the mobilization
and the discourses that legitimized Modi’s legal reforms. The second section sets out their
criticisms of the legal amendments, while the third delves into the dynamics of the farmers’
strike. In the end, there are some final reflections on the balance of the strike and the ongoing
dispute.

1. The inevitability of the farmers' strike

Vijoo K.: Narendra Modi and the BJP took up a campaign giving the promise to farmers a
shift from their situation. ‘Agrarian crisis will come to an end,’ they said. ‘Incomes would be
doubled, farmers would be given at least 50% more than the cost of production as the support
price, and inputs would be subsidized. The loans would be at low-interest rate insurance ‘.

During the 2019 national elections, the Balakot airstrike1 happened in Pakistan. An
ultranationalist campaign fully supported by the corporate media and companies followed.
Then, 14 crores (140’000.000) of farmers benefited on the day of the election, getting
installments. It was literally like bribing them.

Rajesh S.: BJP just gave goods to the poor, saying, ‘you will have to vote for us so that we
will win. ‘Elections are very, very costly. People must invest so much money. That is one of
the reasons why the left is very diminished.

Vijoo K.: We are part of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and you also have more than
56 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements. So, all of them call for cutting down and
withdrawing your import duties. So, you are having cheaper imports being dumped here, and
our subsidies are cut. In contrast, the developed countries are still carrying on with their

1
subsidies. What is the cost-benefit of free trade for India? Earlier, it used to happen that, in
the WTO, the third world countries were together. Now among them, there are divisions.

Mohanakumar S.: Agriculture in India contributes to only eight percent of the gross national
income. However, 45% of India’s workforce still depends on agriculture directly.

Vijoo K.: After decades of neoliberal policies, more than 400.000 farmers have committed
suicide. This figure doesn’t include landless. It doesn’t include the number of women—the
Dalits and Adivasi, the oppressed cast and tribes.

Mohanakumar S.: Land is not productively cultivated, and investments in land have
substantially declined. On the other side, investment from the government is not coming to
agriculture, and infrastructure for agriculture is not coming. Farmers should be assured of a
remunerative price that is 50% higher than the total cost of production, which is also not
happening.

Rajesh S.: Here in Rajasthan, 90% of the farmers depend on rain in Rajasthan. So, the water
supply, fertilizers, and electricity the government should provide are only granted to 20% of
the farmers. Also, women’s rights over the land are only 10 to 15%, but 60% of the
agriculture workforce is women. In the city of Udaipur, 70% of tribal people don’t have the
right over the forest and land, but they have lived there for many decades or centuries.

Mohanakumar S.: About 80% of the farmers in India are marginal and small. Marginal
farmers are those whose parcel has less than a hectare. A small farmer owns one to two
hectares of land. So naturally, the land concentration has been increasing in India. People
who have money are purchasing land, and people who do not are selling their land. The
situation in rural India is that there is nobody to buy that agricultural land because there’s no
use of agricultural land as a means of production. Huge companies are buying land for non-
agricultural purposes—the construction of houses, construction of business complexes, and
others. The government is relaxing the regulations on land ceiling ownership.

The Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) have a role in land and marketing
yards. The marketing yards and funds from the Central and state governments need to be
maintained. Still, the central government has stopped its funding. The marketing yard is
where farmers bring their products for hygienic purposes; they need to do it to sell their
products to people outside and to export them. Unless you get substantial funding from the
government, they cannot be maintained. So that’s one way of killing the agriculture sector.

Vijoo K.: Some years ago, six farmers were killed in Madhya Pradesh. I, along with other of
our leaders, visited their families. They have been BJP supporters. There were BJP flags on
their houses, but what was the mistake, according to the government, that resulted in the
killing? They were demanding a proper price for their produce. They were cultivating garlic,
which is very costly in the market. The farmers told us that the cost of production per
kilogram is around 33 to 35 rupees. But the government claims that it is only 27 rupees. The
farmer was getting barely one rupee per kg in the wholesale market. So, even if you don’t get
the picking cost, you also don’t get the transportation costs.

Mohanakumar S.: Concerning the Minimum Support Prices (MSP), it includes the cost of
production of 23 agricultural commodities in India. The government announces their prices.
But the government procures less than five commodities. Wheat. Rice, and sugarcane, among
others. It represents less than 5% of procurement. Rice procurement takes place in Punjab,
not in other areas. Farmers think, ‘if I take my products to the MSP house, they will take
them, but I will get the money after three months. ‘Because they have complex procedures,
they will take your products, saying, ‘your money will be credited to your account in the bank
through all these procedures.’ However, the positive side of MSP is that it will determine the
product in the market. If MSP is higher, the marketplace will also be higher. But farmers are
unable to sell at MSP rates because there must be procurement places, which are scarce. They
think, ‘I will have to take my produce two hundred kilometers away to get the MSP in the
procurement place. On my farm, the trader comes, and he will give me one rupee less and, at
the same time, I will get the money back. Money is in my pocket. As a farmer, I need money
to go. ‘That is the other way to kill the MSP system and the agriculture sector.

Food security has an act in India2. It means that through the Public Distribution System
(PDS), the government of India should distribute grains to people, which is a good policy.
But to work correctly, there should be proper procurement, which doesn’t take place. But
unless there is MSP and a strengthening of the PDS, India cannot ensure food security.

2
Indian Parliament. National Food Security Act. 2013.
Vijoo K.: In 2015, the Indian government proposed an amendment to the Land Acquisition
Act without any discussion with state governments, farmers, or labor organizations. It
established that farmland could be taken in the name of developmental projects, such as
infrastructure, or for private profit, like industry. It does not contemplate the consent of the
farmers and compensation. So, we formed a broad coalition against that, and it was called the
Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan (Movement for Land Rights), reuniting more than 300
organizations across the country. Our main goal was to fight for land and forest rights and
against land-grabbing for corporate profit.

Vijoo K.: In 2018, AIKS and other organizations marched from Nashik to Mumbai. That is
about 186 kilometers. It started on March 6th of 2018 and reached on the 12th, when
thousands of farmers, a good number of them landless and tribal farmers, were demanding
land rights and forest rights, tax waivers, and tenants’ rights. We caught the imagination of
the people. All sections came out. And the government there accepted all the 12 demands.
That gave hope for more such struggles. Nation-wide solidarity groups, called ‘nation for
farmers’, others called ‘doctors for farmers,’ ‘teachers for farmers,’ and ‘journalists for
farmers,’ appeared across the country.

In 2020, when COVID hit, there was the biggest exodus in India since the partition in 1947.
Millions of people were forced to walk thousands of kilometers from the southern part of
India to the north. This government did nothing to support them. COVID lockdown led to a
dynamic where you had a harvesting and marketing crisis. Farmers lost huge incomes;
agriculture laborers lost their jobs. According to government figures, more than 120 million
people lost their jobs.

We, as AIKS, agriculture workers, and the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), came
together. Within a month of the lockdown, we had the first protest, demanding monetary
support to people who lost their incomes and food security by providing a food kit, as it
happened in Kerala. The government response was tax waivers for corporations.

Sanjay M.: During COVID, the government’s priorities were supposed to save people’s
lives. They thought that people were locked in their homes, and because nobody came outside
to oppose any policy, it was the perfect time to take these laws’ reforms. In the first week of
June, they came up with three ordinances. That is when this movement started.
 2. The government reforms: between illegality and illegitimacy

Vijoo K.: In 2014, when BJP came into power, they established the Shanta Kumar
Commission, which recommended the proposals that Modi is now implementing through the
three ordinances. This government was trying to centralize in terms of the powers and then
deregulate entirely further corporate cronies. But what about the Indian Constitution?
Agriculture per se should fall under state governments’ control; in some cases, it also comes
under the concurrence between the states and the center. But what they were doing was to
bring it under the trade, bringing it under the purview of trade. India is a federal system, but
there was no discussion with states or national political parties. No conversation with social
organizations.

Mohanakumar S.: The new acts were part of the trade liberalization and opening of the
economy so that the restrictions placed on the buyers of the products could be taken out.
During the covid period, the government of India introduced three formulas. They aimed to
undermine the role of provinces and take direct control of agriculture, production, and trade.
As per the constitution of India, agriculture comes under the state and the center, but trade is
a part of the central government only.

This is how things usually work now. The traders, independent agents, go to the villages and
buy what farmers produce. They have worked together for many years, even with the
farmers’ fathers. So, my father was selling onions to a particular trader in the market. I will
also be selling to the same trader. This is a generational relationship that the traditional trader
and his son have established with my father and me as a farmer. How it works is that the
farmer calls, and the agent comes to his house. The farmer tells the agent that this is the
trader’s price. And he can sell the produce to him, or he is free to sell it anywhere. There are
always hundreds or thousands of agents who will come. Usually, there is an unwritten
agreement between the trade and the farmer, established after many years of trust. Of course,
the trader will take his average profit. If situations of untrust happen, he can move out to
another agent. There is no binding code.
In another common situation, traders sometimes lend money to farmers, often without any
interest. Farmers with low income also have unforeseen expenses, like a wedding, festivities
at their house, or some illness. It is based on understanding and trust.

There is a middleman who connects the farmer and the main trader in the market. In between,
it is the responsibility and duty of the agents of the principal trader to visit villages, find
better crops, and identify the farmer who can sell to him because his produce can be exported.
However, in the existing structure, farmers bring their produce from distant places into the
market after taking information on price and the demand for the products in the market by
varieties. But when a buyer goes to the actual farm, where production takes place, farmers
need access to the information, and due to the nature of their asset position, they usually
badly need cash. They are cashed out. It means that agents purchase the products, as standing
crops, before the harvest, and farmers will accept the offer despite the actual price of selling.
The trader will take over the price advantages.

Concerning the three amendments, the first law is called the Farming Produce Trade and
Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act 2020. The second law is The Farmers
(Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020,
and the third one is the Essential Commodities Amendment Act, 2020.

Vijoo K.: The First amendment wanted to eliminate the government-controlled agriculture
produce market yards. So especially in North India, where APMC yards came up in the 1960s
to protect the farmers from the traders’ exploitation. You must do some reforms to set right
those issues. They are just dumping it and saying that the corporate companies will pay you
better prices.

Also, the government announces MSP, but farmers don’t get that price. For a quintal of
paddy rice, the MSP was 1960 rupees, but since there is no procurement, farmers in Bihar
were getting only between 800 and 1000. They are losing more than a thousand rupees per
quintal, which is the situation in most parts of India.

The second act was about contract farming and corporate farming. It established that even if
there is a dispute, farmers cannot go to court. It must be resolved at the bureaucratic level in
the district.
Mohanakumar S.: The second newly introduced law is about contract farming, a big
business form that intends to give those who have the capital to invest in the farmer’s land the
right over the land.

Vijoo K.: The third act was to do away with the Essential Commodities Act, which was
brought in the 1950s, to ensure that the big corporate companies or trading houses cannot
hold essential commodities so that prices are regulated. You cannot have an artificial scarcity
created; you cannot lead to black marketing. The purpose is that from now on, there will be
no restrictions on these commodities, like wheat, rice, oilseeds, potato, and onion. And the
installed capacity can be retained by the company even when there’s a crisis here.

Mohanakumar S.: The first act intended to abolish the existing structure of APMC in India.
The design of the agriculture commodity market is that there are specialized markets wherein
if a farmer under the jurisdiction of the market needs to sell their products, he does it there.
These buyers, agriculture and commodity traders, must come to the market and buy it only
from the market. With the introduction of the new law, farmers can sell it anywhere. As per
the new act, the traders can go to any place in the village and buy the farmers’ products. It
aims to ensure that free trade takes place.

There is imaginary propaganda pushed forward by the state, unions, or the people who
support the central government and those who support the newly introduced acts being spread
in the village. They say that the middleman exploits you so badly that you can directly sell to
the trader if the new laws exist. But the trader is an invisible entity sitting in the US. Buying
my coriander, I cannot go and call him; there is no accessibility.

3. The ins and outs of the mobilization that shocked India

Sanjay M.: Firstly, we started from the village level. So, when the government made these
laws, we started the preparation. We started by going to the farmers’ houses. These were anti-
farmers laws and anti-poor because if these laws were implemented, our country’s food
security would be at risk.
We tried to educate the farmers. Concerning the mobilization, we told them to come
prepared. We did not know if they must stay there for two days, seven days, or six months.
And families don’t have the same status; some are wealthy farmers. We don’t know how long
we will stay fighting. So, in the beginning, we came with our tractors slowly. We brought our
food and clothes and took everything in our vehicles. We never wanted a confrontation; we
wanted a peaceful moment to sleep on the highway. This movement is not only farmers but
also agriculture laborers, teachers, youth, employees, women, owners, and students;
everybody is supporting. At that time, if you can give money, you give money. Every way to
show support was good. If you can provide food, give food. Some villages gave quintals of
wheat, rice, and even lakhs of money.

We started the mobilization on November 26th. From that day on, we were always in a
celebration mood. You never had to worry about the farmers’ food because we are farmers.
We brought what we were growing so we could always eat. We brought rice, wheat,
almonds, and apples. So, every day we meet, listen to music and dance.

This is the biggest movement in the world in the present day in terms of participation. I think
not only farmers and their families gave crores of money. Everybody wanted to give
something; somebody sent it to us every day. For example, people from Haryana came with a
trolley full of milk. They came with milk daily, giving a hundred liters, two hundred liters
from every house. They were collecting one liter of milk dairy. And after collecting it, they
traveled 100 kilometers in a tractor to provide for us every day. Please take this for yourself,
they said to us. They were bringing some vegetables, fruits, and almonds from Kerala
farmers. And for us, Kerala farmers sent us almonds and dry fruits.

On November 26th, AIKS and other farmers’ organizations decided to call for a strike. We
decided to move from Punjab to Delhi. When they reached the Haryana border (a state
controlled by BJP), our people were received with tasers, tear gas, and water cannons. Let’s
recall that this is a time of the year when the cold hits hard, having minus one or zero Celsius
degrees.

Vijoo K.: We were at the borders of Delhi. Then we were blocked by the government. They
blocked the borders. So, we sat there.
Sanjay M.: We did the tractors march. The farmers came with this commitment, saying we
would stay for six months if needed. And if the government doesn’t accept our demands, we
will stay in Delhi for eight months. On December 12th, we organized a farmers’ Morcha on
the highway in Rajasthan. We coordinated with farmers from Haryana, Punjab, from all over
the country.

During the year that the protest lasted, about 20,000 people sat some time, even at the wrong
station. We were aware that farmers must take care of families and farms, so we decided
tactically that there was no need to keep so many people all the time.

Vijoo K.: In that tractor rally we had before a rehearsal. So, to our Haryana comrades, I
asked how many tractors from our organizations could come. They told 150. I told them it
would be a good show even if only a hundred came. But we had more than 480 tractors with
our flag.

Sanjay M.: About the dynamic of the strike and the camps, we all have our organization
leaders. Every day in the morning and evening, we had meetings with them. What problems
did we have? How to deal with them? After this meeting, we started a public forum. At 10,
our meeting started. In my Morcha, I convene the session and call speakers from other
Morchas. Outside leaders were also coming. At the end of the meeting, we also organize
online meetings. In the evening, we meet again to evaluate all activities. How many new
people have come today? How many people are going back? Every day we hold a press
conference. And we write the next day’s program. So, we will circulate all this information
all over the countries. We had a WhatsApp group of press people and some broadcast people.
It included more than 200 journalists. We also circulate the work of our groups on Facebook.
So, every day we did this for more than 300 days.

From time to time, we call the leaders of all morchas from different organizations. One
member can participate in the general meeting whenever any issue comes up. And after the
discussion, which can last one hour, two hours, or 10 hours, we decide. This is the way it
worked. We always have the attention of the media.

Vijoo K.: From nearby villages, people were contributing food, blankets, and water;
everything was coming from the people.
Sanjay M.: A big group of Sikhs sent blankets and everything. Trucks were coming and
giving.

On December 13th, we decided to block the highway between Mumbai and Delhi in
Rajasthan. Throughout the year of mobilization, we didn’t stop blocking the road. Not a
single hour. For one year. At this blocking point, located between Delhi and Jaipur, people
come from north, and south India, north India, East India, West India, Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Madhya Pradesh, Jammu, and Kashmir. So, from all over the country, groups of farmers
came and stayed.

Rajesh S.: Udaipur is a tribal area. 57% of the total population is tribal. In general, tribal
people were not involved in the movement because there was a lack of education and
poverty.

Sanjay M.: In the Haryana border, the country’s busiest road crosses. So, the government
sent military and some police forces to disturb us. Many crores of rupees they earned from
petrol, so when this railroad was blocked, they were impacted. Sometimes, they went to the
villages provoking religious people against us. But they failed.

Mohanakumar S.: In October 2021, they agreed that the central government would
constitute a three-member committee whose report must be accepted. The committee report
was submitted within a month, but unfortunately, the committee members were pro-
liberalization. One of them had been writing profusely for a long time in favor of the
liberalization of agriculture in India. PC Joshi was an agriculture scientist arguing for the
same, and the third was a union leader. The committee submitted the report to the Supreme
Court, but it has not been released.

Sanjay M.: The last day was very emotional for everyone. Very joyful. However, 750
farmers died in the protests. We are demanding compensation to the families of the farmers’
martyrs and that the government drop criminal charges against the imprisoned people.

Vijoo K.: We had two other key demands. One, C2 + 50%. The second was freedom from
debt for farmers, which has caused many suicides.
 4. Leaders’ final remarks on the strike

Vijoo K.: The narrative that says that the struggle only happened in Punjab, that involved a
few farmers in Punjab, we broke it. We brought farmers from Maharashtra, for example. The
Saharanpur border of Delhi was a mini-India because you had people from the entire country.
You had a thousand farmers from Kerala on the Ghazipur border. We brought people from
Uttarakhand and Bihar and Jharkhand and all those places.

Mohanakumar S.: The unions were also tired. Because, you know, it takes a lot of
coordination, committee coordination, committees formed by many unions, and they cannot
continue with the struggle for a long time. It's more than one and a half years, and they must
finance; they ought to find finance, bringing people from the rural area and assembling them
in a city town area. For so many months, it has been a huge task. So, that also forced them.
And many people have died.

Also, the strike was confined to a few states. Farmers from Haryana, Punjab, and western UP.
The rest of the support was from the political parties and solidarity. It was confined to a few
provinces in India because it is where large farmers exist. They have vast tracts of land, and
their productivity is higher, but they have support from other places. But it was not
convincing to many other ordinary people in the rest of India. And as a result, the strike could
not have an all-India character.

Farmers' unions do not discuss farmers' distress; they want to use them as the support base in
rural India. That is what we have seen in the last struggle. These political parties did not lead
them to Delhi to support the battle. So, the farmers' unions cannot take such issues and
distress on a broader scale to give a strong shake to the national government.

Vijoo K.: I know that when it comes to measures for poor people, social security, people
immediately talk about the fiscal deficit and financial issues. But when you give concessions
to corporate companies, no one is saying this is bad economics. When the farmer is
producing, and the state is fixing a price, we know that the company is unwilling to give that
price. It is buying at a lesser price. What we are saying is you, the state, fix a price. You
ensure that companies will buy it at that price. So, it's not a burden on farmers and will be
entirely on the government. The government would mainly buy food security components,
which are food grains. We have been saying for a long time that we must bring agriculture
out of the WTO.

We decided to have new mobilization on July 31st. We started meetings again. And again, we
are trying to organize the movement because the government is trying to bring back that law
through the states.

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Appendix

Largest farmers´ campsites around New Delhi