Namita Waikar’s ‘Farmers Protest! A Movement for Our Times’: Widening agrarian crisis, and where the struggle fits in
The success of the peaceful farmers’ movement on the outskirts of Delhi during 2020-21 attracted global interest in the agrarian crisis in India. Namita Waikar’s book focuses on three basic questions — what farmers want, what the government has been trying in terms of reforms, and what plans the corporates, farmer producer organisations and other entities have for the country’s agricultural economy.
A majority of Indian farmers (85 per cent) are marginal (operating less than 2.5 acres) and small (between 2.5-5 acres). They are victims of a deepening crisis reflected in the form of a high level of indebtedness. It is estimated that more than four lakh farmers died by suicide between 1997-2022. The figure does not include women farmers, tenants and farm labourers who died by suicide.
Farmers want agriculture to become viable and an end to their exploitation by traders and corporate entities.
The agrarian crisis deepened after the new economic policy in 1991 and especially after 1994-95, when public investment in agriculture by both the Union and state governments declined to control fiscal deficit.
Waikar holds the opinion that the poor farmers and the rural population had begun to face restrictions imposed through policy decisions — impacting their access to water, electricity, credit, input subsidy, health and education. This led to an increased cost of living and cultivation. The crop prices, especially the minimum support price (MSP), were kept low so it did not impact the urban population’s capacity to buy wheat and rice. Public procurement was restricted to Punjab, Haryana, western UP and some coastal regions. The MSP announced for the remaining crops was not enforced.
The farmers’ specific demands include a loan waiver, MSP for all 23 crops for which the Centre makes announcements, legal guarantee of MSP and its fixation as per the Swaminathan Commission report.
An invisible fear looms among farmers of the forcible acquisition of their land by corporate entities in the guise of contract farming. Thus the demand to disallow private markets parallel to the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) mandis.
There’s also a widely-held belief that continuation of the existing policy will deepen the farm crisis. The Green Revolution was promoted to increase foodgrain production in the 1960s and 1970s at the instance of the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. This involved high-yield variety seeds, chemical inputs and power-operated machinery. This was backed by MSP for crops via the Agricultural Price Commission, now renamed as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), APMC markets, public procurement for PDS, availability of bank credit and input subsidies.
This strategy made the country self-sufficient in foodgrains. However, the offshoot was a mono-cropping pattern of wheat and rice, commercialisation of agriculture, indebtedness of farmers, depletion of ground water resources and poisoning of soil. Instead of correction of the distortions of the Green Revolution technology, the government started reducing investment in agriculture in the mid-1990s.
In 2020, the Centre came up with three farm laws, which were vehemently opposed for involving the corporate sector in procurement and storage of foodgrains, contract farming for price realisation and establishment of private markets.
The experience of farmers in dealing with the corporate sector has been negative both in terms of procurement and payment. In order to maximise profits, private entities have faced charges of low and delayed payment, as in the case of sugarcane. There is also the issue of not lifting the agreed-to quantity on the pretext of poor quality.
The author brings out the emerging contradictions between the farmers and the government along with private companies. While studying the success of the 2020-21 farmers’ movement, she hammers the point that farmers’ mobilisation alone is not enough unless it is supported by the civil society. The earlier mobilisation of farmers in Maharashtra and southern states and formation of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) in June 2017, according to her, played the role of a catalyst to bring all farmers’ unions together during the Kisan Mukti Morcha in November 2018. This led to formation of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) in October 2020 for withdrawal of the three laws.
The important lesson is that the farmers have no option but to continue their struggle for a better deal unitedly. Waikar suggests that the movement has to take within its fold the invisible farmers such as landless tenants, agricultural labourers, women farmers without title to land and Adivasis. However, the author has missed in this discourse the Pagri Sambhal Jatta Movement in 1907 led by Sardar Ajit Singh.
Overall, the book is a seminal contribution to the literature on farmers’ movement.
— The reviewer is an economist
Book Review