A group of economists and senior professors have raised serious concerns over the impact of new farm laws on the agriculture sector, including farmers, farmworkers and consumers, and requested Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar to repeal the new legislations.
In a letter addressed to the Union Minister on Thursday, the group of economists led by former professor of University of Hyderabad and National Institute of Rural Development D. Narasimha Reddy, explained the merits in their plea for repeal of the laws along with impact they would have on the country.
The economists suggested the Union Minister to repeal the new laws stating that they were not in the best interests of small and marginal farmers and consumers in the country and also taking in view a broad section of the farming community had taken up an unprecedented agitation across the country, particularly around the nation’s capital.
Stating that they were of the firm belief that improvements and changes were required in the agricultural marketing system for the benefit of millions of small farmers, they said the reforms brought in by the new laws would not serve that purpose. They were based on wrong assumptions and claims about why farmers were unable to get remunerative price, about farmers not having freedom to sell wherever they want under the previous laws and about regulated markets not being in the farmers’ interests.
They explained in detail how the new laws would undermine the State governments’ role in markets, how they would help collusion of traders and market manipulation in the unregulated market space and how the experience in Bihar since the removal of its APMC Act in 2006 had left farmers with less choice of buyers and less bargaining power resulting in significantly lower prices compared to other states.
Further, they also explained about the harms staring at the farmers with unequal players in the contract farming in the absence of mechanisms to protect their interests and the domination of big agri-business players would lead to consolidation of the market and the value chains in agricultural commodities in the hands of a few big players, as has happened in the USA, Europe and other countries.
Professors Kamal Nayan Kabra, K.N. Harilal, Rajinder Chaudhary, Surinder Kumar, Arun Kumar, Ranjit Singh Ghuman, R. Ramakumar, Vikas Rawal and Himanshu, along with Professor Narasimha Reddy, are the signatories to the letter sent to the Union Minister.
Published - December 17, 2020 09:21 pm IST
