Swarajya Editorial: What PM Modi Should Do When Farm Unions Are Escalating Demands скачать в хорошем качестве

Swarajya Editorial: What PM Modi Should Do When Farm Unions Are Escalating Demands

The escalating demands of the farm unions even after the government’s capitulation on the repeal of three reform laws shows the need for a change in strategy. As long as the Union government is seen as the primary agent in resolving the problems of Indian agriculture, the rich farmers’ lobby is always going to win. Three elements of the new strategy ought to be this, editorial director R Jagannathan writes: One, any talks on minimum support prices (MSPs), whether it is about giving legal guarantees for the same or extending the system to other crops, should not happen without states being in the picture. A negotiating team should include key members of both Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition ruled states. It is the states which need to carry the can on MSPs from now on. Without state involvement, the lopsided benefits flowing from agricultural subsidies to rich farmers in a small region of north India will never be known. Two, future support for farm reforms, apart from being state-led, should be in the form of central investments in agri-infrastructure, marketing and branding support, and long-term interest-free loans for farmers in the drier areas of Punjab and Haryana to shift to other, less water-intensive crops. The whole logic of reforms goes out of the window if the Centre has to guarantee prices that the market cannot bear. No industry in the world can be permanently sustained on the basis of guaranteed prices for the entire produce. Making MSP a legal right is a not a sensible option since no one can force buyers to pay a certain price to anyone. Nor should the courts be asked to decide such cases when they can’t cope even with the current pendency levels. Buyers of farm produce can, anyway, choose not to buy at MSP levels, or they may buy clandestinely from those willing to sell below support prices. Legal guarantees can work only if the buyer is the government, but that is fiscally unsustainable. Three, all future discussions with the farmer unions should be televised, and not held behind closed doors. The nation needs to know what kind of bullies the government is up against, and how no negotiations can be valid if held at gun-point. Televising the talks will, at the very least, force the unions to be reasonable, and if they don’t agree, they can always be called out as bullies. #FarmersProtest #FarmLaws #ModiGovt #MSP #Agriculture #FarmReforms Subscribe to Swarajya on YouTube. Get a Swarajya subscription: https://subscriptions.swarajyamag.com... Website: https://swarajyamag.com/ Twitter:   / swarajyamag   Facebook:   / swarajyamag