'The law related to Agricultural Produce marketing is a death warrant' / P Sainath: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos

By Dilip -

“When protestors block a road or damage it, they are branded as criminals. What if governments do the same? Are they not what they call us?” asks 70-year-old Harinder Singh Lakha, a farmer from Mehna village in Punjab’s Moga district.  Lakha is referring to the 10-feet trenches dug in the roads by the authorities to prevent Punjab’s marching farmers from entering Delhi. For days now, well over 100,000 farmers from the state, along with many from Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, have been compelled to fight pitched battles with the police and other forces for the right to enter their country’s capital city.

While the Delhi police relented after three days of confrontation, the Haryana government is still preventing the protestors from crossing the state borders. And though they have publicly been given permission to enter the capital, on the ground the central government has not tried to make that any easier. Despite the ‘permission’, the trenches, the barbed wire, the barricades – all remain. And the tear gas shells and water cannons have left a lingering trail of destruction….

https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/the-law-related-to-apmcs-is-a-death-warrant/

Bharat Bhushan: Short of answers or assurances; Govt unable to handle farmer protests

P Sainath: Farm bills are nothing but corporatisation of agriculture

Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos: P. Sainath

Amidst an uproar and stiff protest, three contentious farm Bills were passed in the Rajya Sabha on Sunday and Tuesday. The Bills seek to replace ordinances promulgated in June this year and were already cleared by the Lok Sabha. The idea behind all the three bills is to liberalise the farm markets in the hopes that doing so will make the system more efficient and allow for better price realisations for all concerned, especially the farmers. The central concern of the Bills is to make Indian farming a more remunerative enterprise than it is right now. However, they have seen widespread protests – particularly in the states of Haryana and Punjab.

To understand why the Bills are being protested and what the points of concern for the agriculture sector and those who represent it are, The Wire‘s Mitali Mukherjee interviewed P. Sainath, the founder editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India and former rural affairs editor of The Hindu, on Monday. The following is a transcript of the interview, lightly edited for clarity and style….

https://thewire.in/rights/farm-bills-agrarian-crisis-p-sainath-mitali-mukherjee

Winds from Punjab: By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Thousands of protesting farmers enter Delhi defying water cannon and police crackdown

Alessandra Mezzadri: Informal labour, the majority world and the need for inclusive theories and politics

Report of Fact Finding Team of Editors Guild of India on attacks on media in Bastar

Mukul Kesavan - Right not rabid: Respectable conservatism in the time of Trump


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