How to mismanage public policy? Learning from India's ongoing farmers' protest

You don’t cut down your head when you have a headache. You apply suitable balm to it. But the recently passed three farm Acts shows how the present central government is happy to just remove the head to get rid of the headache. The ongoing Farmers' protest against the central government's newly introduced three farm Acts, with a demand to repeal these Acts with immediate effect, is a multidimensional learning pot for all of us.  

We don't have many media houses with the courage to question the political powerhouse or the central government or facilitate the weaker section to raise their voice, or to help the nation to understand why people are agitating. In fact, the media behaves irrationally by fabricating against people who try to put forward their demands through collective action like the present 'Delhi Chalo' movement by the farmers. That is why, a couple of days back, I decided to take a deeper look at this issue with an unbiased and rational lens. Let me start my analysis with the widely used phrase- "why only farmers from Punjab are protesting?". I took up this question first as many of my friends have asked me the same. Few also claimed that farmers in Punjab and Haryana are a bit pampered compared to farmers from other states. The basic problem that I have understood after talking to my learned friends is that most of us have a fixed image for the word 'farmer' in our head, that is a 'farmer in distress'. A country like ours that is yet to come out of colonial hangover has a strong belief that people in distress can't agitate or raise their voice against the powerful or even start a protest without any external support. This belief system of ours is the core to our misbelieve that every agitation or collective movement or protest against the state or the government or a certain law shall have a political flavour, or any other hidden agenda attached to it.

Many of us are still in disbelief that farmers are protesting as we think that they should not be protesting as they are not capable of doing so. Many of us are surprised to see that farmers in Punjab have tractors, trucks, and have rations for months to be able to continue the protest for long. In such a case, we must ask ourselves why only the farmers in Punjab or Haryana have such capabilities and asset base to be able to camp at the Haryana-Delhi border with a strong demand to repeal the Acts? Why farmers from other states especially Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhatisgarh, West Bengal where the farm distress is very high are not protesting? Are they not going to be affected negatively by these new laws or are they very much happy with these new changes? Or they simply do not have the capability to protest? 

We need to understand why there is such a huge difference in the capability levels of farmers of Punjab when compared to other states. Most of the farmers in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhatisgarh, and West Bengal don't have direct access to the mandi or market yard of APMC. My father who has been doing agriculture work, mostly paddy in Odisha, has never been to mandi in his lifetime. He is 67-year-old now. He still works through a middle-man with whom he has been doing business for the last 20 years. In western Odisha, the situation is even worse. When I asked a number of farmers in Nuapada district whether they know the nearest mandi or not, they have answered me 'no'. It is still a middleman who connects their produce to the market. The case of Bihar is dire as farmers don't have APMC or record of any market transaction as to understand whether removal of APMC helped the farmers or not. The answer is definitely negative and I unearthed it when I interacted with farmers in an individual capacity. I had received similar responses when I had interacted with farmers from tribal populated states like Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand where the landholding is relatively very small with a heavy population of sharecroppers.

So, the three Acts are not affecting the farmers of the above states because things like APMC/ regulated mandis, the limit of storing essential commodities, contract farming are something that they have hardly ever experienced. It is like asking a cricketer how a change in rules in Football is going to affect her/ him because he is a player? You simply can't give a logic saying that both cricket and football are sports and change in any sports will affect the players of another sport. So, whether you introduce a new act or don't, that is not going to affect the farmers from these states, and they are not bothered to protest like farmers from Punjab. The farmers of Punjab who have a better experience with mandis and contract farming can differentiate whether the new Acts are going to affect them positively or negatively. So, those who are questioning the heavy participation of farmers from Punjab in the ongoing protest must also question why farmers from only a certain state are so progressive, organized, and well informed to understand the agrarian crisis and continue a protest with proper planning? Whereas farmers from other states don't understand the basic functionality of APMC/mandi, contract farming and terms and conditions for storage of essential commodities. Instead of terming the farmers of Punjab as ‘pampered ones’, we must ask ourselves why farmers in our states are not that progressive? Why they don't have the tractors, trucks, rations, and collective community action, and finally the courage to stand for what they believe is right? Instead of making the farmers access to existing regulated mandis/ APMCs, the government is simply doing away with it by allowing private mandis or trade without the existence of any mandis. What is stopping the government to facilitate and empower its farmers to do trading in regulated mandis in a transparent manner?

Agricultural prosperity depends a lot on rural supply chain management where you need easy access to formal credit/ input, good roads/ connectivity till farm gate, easy access to nearby warehouse/cold storage, market information mostly grades and price and nevertheless a protective market for farmers where the government itself takes the role of the regulator to protect the interest of all while prioritizing the interest of the farmer. I should not miss the most important aspect here, facilitate the inclusion of farmers or their organization/union in the process of policymaking. I do support the open market when it comes to luxury goods like AC, LED TV, car, etc. to benefit the consumer and these products are manufactured and sold by big corporate houses directly with proper risk management systems in place. But, when it comes to farm produce, I always urge for a government-regulated market because here the produce is being produced by marginal and small farmers who are vulnerable to market shock. Other than this, nutritious food on everyone's plate at an affordable price is something that can be achieved through a proper regulated agricultural market where the government as a regulator can have an eye on both 'farm distress selling' and 'retail spread' to benefit both the farmer and consumer. By doing away with such regulated mandis/markets by allowing private players to set up mandis that too for non-perishable farm produce, the government is not willing to take the responsibility of a trustee of farmers' interest. I feel like the present farm laws were drafted with the underlying belief that in India the entire farm supply chain management is working efficiently.

The central government heavily backed by biased media houses are simply overlooking the protest though I am happy to see rounds of discussion between the government and farmer leaders. But I see these discussions differently - like someone has developed a medicine and is now searching for diseases to make the medicine a good fit. We all are strong believers in the saying- 'prevention is better than cure' but I strongly believe in 'cure is better than prevention' when it comes to farmers or artisans or the poor. In the absence of adequate risk management systems for farmers in India, we must concentrate more on curing the disease than investing in preventions because if they are failed to be cured then they will keep falling into the trap again and again. I know that farmers from Punjab do not represent the entire farmer community of India, but they certainly represent some of the interesting aspects of development like the sense of oneness of a community, the sense of community mobilization, the sense of community support, the collective capability to stand long and protest. The protest also highlighted the level of empowerment of farmers belonging to Punjab and Haryana, when compared to other states. The recent standoff between the farmers and the government also highlighted India’s recent governance crisis- the gradual failure of making of India’s public policy. The basic principle of making of public policy is to understand the need of the people and establish institutional arrangements to ensure maximum benefit for maximum people while prioritizing the interest of the most vulnerable communities. But the present government has developed a 'regulatory free, open market' document or I will say advertising paper in the name of public policy where they failed to contact and convince the farmers for whom they have developed it but never took back a step and consulted with stakeholders while developing such policies for the farmers. It is a classic example of new-age public policy making where it serves the advertising agenda of a government more than the public welfare issue. The government has taken such a serious decision through the ordinance way when both the houses were not in the function that too during the lockdown period without proper debate. This way of public policymaking also challenges the basic democratic values- participation, opposition, consultation, and collective consideration.

Let me highlight the plight of sharecroppers in India and how these laws have simply ignored them. In the last couple of years, the states where I have visited and stayed with farmer families at least for a night (Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharastra, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttarakhand), I have done a household level analysis and determined that a sharecropper farmer, after keeping the grains for survival, gets the income of just Rs 37,000 to 41,000 per year for a family of five. They are forced to live in misery as most of them do not have a viable alternative farm livelihood opportunity but yes, they always have a choice to connect the village agent and migrate to western or south India to work in construction sites. In the middle of these agrarian crises, one of the three new Acts is talking about promoting contract farming between big buyers and farmer (original owner of the agricultural land) without focusing much on how a sharecropper can enter a contract with the buyer or how can be he/she be a party to the contract? The act does have a simple mention that every contract between the farmer (the owner of the farmland) and the buyer must take care of the rights of the sharecropper without defining any rights of the sharecropper in the Act. Sharecropping in India is a century-old social contract and somehow it helps the small and marginal sharecroppers to run their families. So, my argument is let's try to reshape the existing social contract for the welfare of the vulnerable but don't simply eradicate the social contract in the name of benefiting the marginal community without having a well-tested alternative to the existing social contracts. Other than that, contract farming may lead to ‘private control of production cycle’ where the farmer will produce crop while stressing the existing ecosystem to meet the need of the private corporates. In a capitalist world, the corporates are too good at creating demands to meet their profit-making desire. So, in such a scenario, the government must notify crops, produce, production cycle, and ethical way of contract while promoting contract farming.

In a country like ours that records farmer suicide cases every year that to be in thousands then we must nudge our head and heart to believe that there must be something seriously wrong in our making of public policy especially when it comes to the farmers. Instead of enacting a 'good to read' document the government must focus on a 'good to do' policy. A democratic and progressive nation always stands by its farmers for many good reasons. 

(Views expressed here are personal not affiliated to any institutions or political party)