Aruna Roy: All citizens should stand with the protesting farmers. At stake is India’s food self-sufficiency and sovereignty

The farmers’ protest is our protest, in a more direct sense than we imagine. Food is basic to our lives and farmers have made us self-sufficient in food. Were it not for the public distribution system (PDS), grain procurement at minimum support price (MSP), and bumper harvests, we would have continually faced widespread hunger and starvation, in independent India. This architecture of self-sufficiency is threatened by these three contentious laws. 

The social scientist Susan George, writing in the 80s, in her book called How the Other Half Dies, shows how control over farming and food production leads to loss of food and national sovereignty. Dependence on outside “market forces” is enslaving. Corporate control over purchase will end with farmers having lost control over contracts, choice of production, and land, making India vulnerable to foreign pressure and blockades.

Among other things, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, popularly termed the ‘APMC Bypass Law’, will undermine the MSP regime – at least for rice and wheat. MSP is a guarantee to the growers of food that their produce will be bought by government at a price where their subsistence will be supported. This guarantee will collapse if the regulated markets are deregulated. This minimum guaranteed price helps protect the farmer from market fluctuation….

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/all-citizens-should-stand-with-the-protesting-farmers-at-stake-is-indias-food-self-sufficiency-and-sovereignty/

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Navsharan Singh: A million reasons to march

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Amit Bhaduri: Faces in mirror held up by farmers’ protest

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Defying capitalism and socialism, Kumarappa and Gandhi had imagined a decentralised Indian economy - Venu Madhav Govindu & Deepak Malghan

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STATE OF RURAL AND AGRARIAN INDIA REPORT 2020. By the Network of Rural and Agrarian Studies

P. Sainath: Did You Think the New Laws Were Only About the Farmers? // SCBA president says farm laws 'unconstitutional', offers free services as lawyer to agitating farmers


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