Farmers Protest: A big failure of participation and communication in bringing new Farming legislation by GoI

    Farmers are sitting on protest at Delhi border against the newly enacted farm bills which promises to open up the transaction of primary farm produce with anybody, anywhere and anytime. In short a forward looking reform but without any mechanism to empower farming community to prepare themselves to this level leaving behind the Mandi system and MSP route.

I don't understand what was the hurry, first it was promulgated through ordinance and then in a much hurried way passed in parliament. This makes the whole process looks suspicious from the beginning and put this forward looking reform in a mess of controversy.

Agriculture is a state subject and having these acts without consulting states  makes the good intention to bad one. 

Secondly farmers organizations were also not consulted . In sum total there was no pre-legislative exercise to bring these laws. All major stakeholders were left out of any consultative process before bringing such an important legislation.

And then the biggest failure of government was to  effectively communicate about the legislation even the master communicator Honorable  P M also has not given any importance to communicate it and taking all stakeholders into confidence post legislation.

In fact in his last Mann ki baat he emphasized on the benefits of it at a time when farmers were marching towards Delhi for protest. I see it as a bad timing and giving a signal that government is not open to discussions. The intention of legislation to free the agriculture  sector becomes a point to stop free movement of farmers to Delhi. What an irony !

In a democracy like India it seldom happens. Things delayed for years and years in want of consensus and GST legislation is an example. We prefer consensus over anything then why this time it was not taken in to account on such an important legislation.

In the beginning when sporadic voices were coming against this legislation then it was aired that middleman are behind it. But seeing the spontaneity of such a large farmers gathering it cannot be a handiwork of any middlemen and political parties. 

Now we are hearing that it is only Punjab and Haryana farmers but slowly farmers from other states also joining  protest. However if it is Punjab and Haryana then also it makes sense since these states are ones which are in fact feeding the country after first green revolution of 60s . They were encouraged to do so and now are the biggest beneficiary of MSP.

I agree time has changed and now as a country we need to move towards more cereal farming and less Rabbi and Kharif and also to go for less water guzzling crops.

But this can not be done in a day night  by unilaterally bringing legislation without consulting major stakeholders . It requires an effective planning and resources to move upward to environment  friendly crops and also nutritious one. 

It can be done like this.

To make this legislation truly supports the next round of improvement in farming  we need to work with all  major stakeholders and chalk out a plan to achieve it since states are still having mechanism of APMC, PACS etc and through this act this opens a new world to farmers to sell their produce to any one. Creating confusion and making available two types of procurement platform for farmers, the one with these acts with no taxes to state government thus making a preferred system over existing one. It is like opening the sky without the know how of flying machine and its maintenance. I remember in 1991 financial sector  was also opened in haste without preparing the ground  and it brought misery to millions of investors/institutions/companies and was instrumental of  many big banking and share scams. It took almost 15 years for financial sector  to internalize it. Let us not repeat the same mistake in opening farming sector all of a sudden without empowering and raising awareness of  its stakeholders.

This could have been done by reforming APMC mandis since mandis are the first place to discover the price. It has many advantages that could have been roped into new legislation without dismantling it completely.

There are instances when new legislation has been rolled down but the most critical aspect at this moment is that government should listen to the main stakeholders and try to build a trust and faith to resolve this impasse by communicating larger long term picture of  transformation this legislation will bring to this country and more particularly to farmers  in next 10 years and beyond.

Another way out is to constitute a select committee with all stakeholders to study newly enacted law and suggest amendments if any  and I suppose that would be the best way to resolve this crisis and bring the new legislation to benefits all.