Millions of farmers in India will benefit from new farm laws, says Oz scholar

CANBERRA: Millions of farmers in India will benefit from the country’s new farm laws, according to an Australian-based scholar.

In an article for Foreign Policy, Salvatore Babones an adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney said that India’s rich farmers are holding up reforms designed to help the poor. “(PM) Modi offered the farmers limited price supports but held the line on loan waivers. Instead, he promised to implement structural reforms after the election. The opposition Indian National Congress countered with a promise to “waive all farm loans” across the entire country–an expensive solution decried by economists as a populist magic wand,” he wrote.

“Despite what activists and Western celebrities supporting the protests would have us believe, most of those who’ve been protesting the new laws since September aren’t drawn from the ranks of marginalized subsistence farmers driven by debt and despair to the edge of suicide,” the scholar added.

Babones stated that these farmers fear that the laws will help large agribusinesses undermine the current state-directed system for buying farm produce and ultimately lead to the dismantling of the price support system on which they depend. They are demanding that the government repeal the reforms and guarantee the future of price supports.

“The overall goal of the reforms is to transform Indian agriculture from a locally managed rural economy into a modern national industry. They will allow small farmers to specialize in niche crops that can be marketed nationwide through large-scale wholesalers. They will also create new risks, as farmers are transformed into an entrepreneur,” according to his article.

He stated that when Western media outlets “uncritically buy into the poor farmers” narrative, the result is pure misinformation. “India’s poorest farmers need the reforms because most of them do not have access to the high levels of government subsidies that benefit the larger-scale Jat farmers of Haryana and Punjab. Forced to sell to local middlemen at spot prices, they lack options for marketing their produce outside their home districts,” he said. ANI