Centre must initiate talks with agitating farmers and resolve their issues before Kharif sowing begins

After the 11th round of talks between the Centre and the farmers’ unions broke down on January 22, the Centre preferred to test the patience of the agitating farmers rather than taking an initiative for renewing talks with them. Both the sides remained adamant on their stand on the contentious three farm laws – the farmers demanding their withdrawal and the Centre bent upon implementing them.

This game must end now before the beginning of the sowing of the kharif crops next month, because it may not only endanger the well-being of the farmers but also the food security of the country.

The Centre must initiate talks rather than humiliating the helpless aggrieved farmers to submission. It would be the most wise step at this juncture, especially in the light of the experience of implementing the new system of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) route in Punjab with the twin objective of making the farmers free from the clutches of the commission agents and doing away with the mandi system.

Though the Minimum Support Price (MSP) is being directly transferred into the accounts of the farmers, the new system has failed in both its objectives.

Due to acute shortage of government personnel, mandi people are still there in the market and the government had to postpone certification of the farmers’ particulars for the present Rabi marketing season. Many questions have arisen out of this experiment that need to be answered before pushing it further for the coming Kharif season.

The most important question that is to be answered first – if the only one item i.e. the implementation of the DBT has failed in its twin objectives, how can the three contentious laws with numerous provisions could be successful in the stated objectives of the government? The implementation of the DBT system in Punjab has sufficiently indicated that the country is yet not ready for sweeping farm reforms as envisaged in the three laws.

Mere experimentation to bring corporate sector to farms without preparation may sabotage the food security of the country because Punjab and Haryana are the food basket of the country. And since the country is not ready for such sweeping farm reforms, the government can safely give their implementation a second thought, at least for now, and can go for negotiations with agitating farmers because the experiment with DBT in Punjab has shown that we need farmers organizations’ involvement in the process. What is happening in Punjab should be an eye opener.

Punjab is the last state in the country to implement the DBT system this Rabi marketing season beginning from April 1 and ending on May 31. Farmers and mandi people were opposing this new system and therefore the state government was against it. It delayed the procurement of wheat for ten days, and the state had to implement it under insistence from the Centre, but there was no preparation for it.

There were only 3,000 government personnel in the mandis including the inspectors, and there are around 13 lakh farmers in the government’s database. It was therefore not possible for the government officials to efficiently handle lakhs of farmers and their crops. Moreover, there were problems relating to loading, unloading, and handling the arrival of the crops and their stock.

It was in this situation the government of Punjab needed the mandi people – commission agents and aarhatiyas. They were on strike at that time fearing the closure of the mandis and their business under the new DBT system aiming at payment to the farmers directly. The state government then talked to them and gave assurance of paying their commission in advance after which the mandi people called off their agitation. Now they are very much part of the system as usual parallel to the DBT system.

The new system, however, broke the relationship between the mandi people and the farmers. Farmers have traditionally been financed by the mandi people in times of their need, because they did not have easy financial access to government and bank funding. What will happen now? Who will give money to the farmers if not the mandi people or the government or banks?

Only time will tell how much this will impact agriculture in the state. A great distrust has been created between the farmers and their financers. Informal money lending system in the state has existed because of lack of access to financial institutions. The issue now needs immediate redressal.

Officials admit that it is not possible for them to handle lakhs of farmers with their meagre strength, and therefore they need aarhatiyas because they have been directly associated with farmers.

Experts also believe that the government should focus on roping in farmer institutions like farmer producer organizations and agricultural cooperative societies in the mandi operations.

A large number of farmers have also reported systemic problems in their registration, verification of land records and produce, and in payments. Some have also reported systemic corruption. Many farmers reported delayed payments, some even by over thirty days.

Officials have also admitted some initial hiccups, but claimed that everything would be sorted out and the transition would become smooth by the next Kharif marketing season. It also indicates that the country is not yet prepared for all the provisions of the three laws that were enacted to push the sweeping farm reforms.

It is in this context that the government should heed the warning served by the agitating farmers union, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha. Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana, and Western Utter Pradesh, have been protesting since November 26, 2020. They have been camping at the three Delhi borders – Singhu, Tikri, and Ghazipur – for almost six months braving the biting cold of December and the scorching sun of May. More than 470 farmers have died during the farmers’ movement.

The Tauktae cyclone has created havoc on the protest site with its heavy spell of rain bringing such a miserable condition that the SKM was provoked to come out with the warning and appealed to the government to initiate dialogue and accept the demands. The government should take advantage of the appeal and enter into talk with them.

The Centre must remember that they themselves had offered in January to suspend the farm laws for 12-18 months, and the Supreme Court had also stayed their implementation till further orders and set up a committee to resolve the impasse. The protesting farmers’ fear of elimination of safety cushion of MSP and the mandi system would leave them at the mercy of big corporate, is not without reason, the reflection of which we have already seen in the implementation of the new DBT system.

(IPA Service)

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