THE FARMERS PROTEST

The Show Time / Sakshi Khanna

"Once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, and preacher but every day, three times a day you need a farmer." In 1947 when we got Independence we all know the farmers were exploited by money lenders and traders. At that point in time, the government decided to resolve this issue to protect the interest of farmers. In order to resolve this, the government came up with an idea of APMC (Agricultural produce market committee), that would work under the state government under which there would be a market place popularly known as mandi that will regulate the notified agricultural produce and livestock The introduction of APMC was done to limit the occurrence of distress sale by the farmers under the pressure of.creditors or other traders. This helped in the regulation of trade in the agricultural sector. The government also introduced the MSP minimum support price) for farmers, ie the government decided a minimum price that a farmer will get for his crops even in a state of low production of crops. The government also stated that if any amount from the produced crop is left over, the government will itself procure it from the farmers at MSP. And, now when we talk about the current situation where farmers are protesting and saying "MANDI BACHAO" they mean to save the APMC. As the Lok Sabha has recently passed three bills in the agricultural sector, which were "ONE MARKET ONE NATION", "Change in ESSENTIAL COMMODITY ACT" and "CONTRACT FARMING". Though the government claims these bills to be in favor of the farmers, our farmers don't feel the same. The first ordinance "one nation one market" gives full freedom f trade farmers all over India. Earlier, where they used to sell within their own state now can trade their production all over the country. The farmers are against this ordinance because the bill says "No tax will be taken on sale purchase of the produced crops outside the APMC, the farmers feel if the government makes the trade outside the APMC market attractive then, this would be a disadvantage to farmers as the trade under APMC is regulated, where all transactions are made in the account and they receive MSP but outside the APMC market there's no such term as MSP. Also, there would be no one to regulate the trade and make sure the farmers are not exploited. The fear of exploitation and the decline of assured MSP is one of the main reasons for farmers to protest. According to the farmers these ordinances will prioritize the agricultural sector of India and thus, private companies will try to set up their own monopoly in the agriculture sector. Eventually, which will make exploiting farmers easy by the private corporates or traders. Today when we hear youth speaking about justice for farmers but at rallies, we could only see aged farmers. The youth is busy in Sushant Singh and Rhea Chakraborty. The media has all the news from the ban of TikTok and PUBG to Rhea Chakraborty. But no news channel has the time to talk about the economic conditions of India or the protest by our farmers. Every major topic is covered by one or the other news. Many false statements are given and every news presented to the public is exaggerated. The new media has changed the definition of journalism. The farmers asked for permission to conduct a rally which was denied by Haryana CM. even after rejection the farmers conducted a non-violent rally on their tractors against the three ordinances by Lok Sabha Privatizing every sector in the economy is not that efficient in a country like India. Since we all know how Pepsi co. exploited farmers of Gujarat as the farmers were not that educated to understand or make any contract. This is the problem which farmers will face as we know, farmers are not that educated. To protect their right government needs to take action. In our Indian culture the one who feeds us is equal to god and how are you respecting our farmers by doing a lathi charge. I hope the government takes same decisions in favor of the farmers and protect their rights.