Mahesh Chander Sudan
We, the people of India, have recently witnessed swiftest passage of three Farm Legislations by both houses of the Parliament despite strong but unsustainable opposition by occupants of opposition benches. This does convey the power of absolute mandate vested with ruling dispensation. The highest temple of Indian democracy called Parliament constitutionally inherits absolute responsibility to legislate for the larger welfare of the state. It amounts to the fact that laws passed by the Indian Parliament are meant to promote interest of the affected community rather than attaining political mileage for the ruling party. The farming sector of India involves around 70 percent of her population and contributes towards 18 percent of Indian Gross Domestic Product. Any legislation affecting fate of such a large segment of population involved in producing agriculture produce needed a close, careful and professional approach with due involvement of each and every stake holder. It is felt that these legislations would have been dealt with prudence and given sufficient scope to accommodate feelings of opposing public representatives to avoid unusual conduct compelling short-circuiting of legislative proceedings. Allowing political alignments to favor or oppose any legislation merely to build pressure in the floor of the house affects the content and context of the proposed bills that hurts the affected community in the long run. It simultaneously leaves scope for fall out of such activities as being witnessed across India for last couple of days.
Advocates of recent Farm Legislations feel that they would usher farmers into new era of empowerment, democratization and freedom to sell their produce without any geographical limitation. It would ultimately shed away involved exploitation of farmers by middle men at Mandis. These three bills termed as Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce Bill 2020, Farmers Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill 2020 and Essential Commodity (Amen-dment) Bill 2020 are basically aimed to create an environment where in a farmer is free to sell his produce for achieving remunerative price free of any geographical barrier. Farmers are also enabled to enter into any farming agreement with agri -business firms for farm services and future purchase of their product at mutually agreed price structure and the third bill regulates supply of essential commodities by Government of India during normal and extraordinary circumstances. It is evident from the contents of the bills that provisions proposed through these legislations are intended to help the farmers but there are grey areas that demanded closer appreciation in view of available market infrastructure. To provide even opportunity of sale and purchase of farmers’ produce by farmers and buyers it required facilitative electronic trading framework and farmers pan India may not have similar facilities. The concept of Minimum support price (MSP) being regulated Centrally by Government of India for various crops that creates a bench mark for farmers to evaluate their produce may wither away in the proposed open market regulated environment.
It is also an established fact that around 86 percent of the farmers have only two to three acres of agriculture land and it may not be prudent enough to expect them transporting their produce to distant places for sale and similarly it may not be remunerative for buyers to encourage such transactions. Dismantling of present day Infrastructure created through Agriculture Produce Market Committee Act 2003 (APMC) and active adherence to Minimum Support Price (MSP) by Government of India for implementing recently enacted legislatures would adversely expose a large chunk of farmer community to local buyers. Critics of these recent legislations including affected small farmers have been expressing their apprehensions by staging protests against these bills across India.
Another salient apprehension of the farmers is with regard to the timing of the bills especially during ongoing pandemic wherein a thin attendance of the members was noticed during short duration of the session. Besides this, there was apparently no urgency of presenting these bills in a short lived session of the Parliament to resolve any serious issue confronting our farmers and more so when the implementation of new legislations requires well drawn seamlessly connected infrastructure to provide electronic trading framework. To enable farmers to really achieve desired benefits of free remunerative sale of their produce, a well-knit transportation across the breadth and length of the country is impractical in the present pandemic constrained environment. It clearly emerges that the ruling dispensation availed the opportunity with clear political motive and not for the larger welfare of the farming community.
It may also be appreciated that the onus of responsibility of conducting orderly business of the Parliament rest with ruling dispensation which is duty bound to honor the majority mandate held with them. The legislative process and procedure is to be respected by all members of Parliament across party lines and any deviation from the standard procedure is likely to attract objections from members of opposition benches besides sending unhealthy signals to the affected farmer community who are quite apprehensive about the speed at which these bills have been pushed through. We, the ordinary citizen of India understand that legislations moved, discussed and passed through legislative procedures in a well-established democratic way are meant to further the welfare of the state and it does not remain within political corridors of ruling political party. The constitution of India being supreme law of land holds sway over all other institutions including our Parliament. Let us now leave it to the future to decide the utility and futility of these laws whether they prove farmers’ friendly or corporates’ friendly.
Jai Hind, Jai Bharat.
The author is Wg Cdr (retd)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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