Its loss-making agriculture and the plight of farmers will not be alleviated by series of subsidies and concessions alone. For this, anti-farmer laws will need amendment.
 |
| Photo (https://unsplash.com/photos/b4eRRodrirQ) |
Today, the economy is being discussed all over the country. On the one side, the ruling party is announcing to make the country a 5 trillion economy, while on the other hand, many financial institutions are hinting signs of recession. Whatever the truth, if Indian want to keep the economy afloat, we cannot pay attention to the agriculture, which is the livelihood of more than half of the country's population and Indias major occupation.
Today, the steady declining economic condition of the agriculturally dependent population and the availability of affordable food for all is a major challenge the country is facing, however the conditions are still manageable. If it is to grow, fundamental updated of policy and major reforms are needed in the agricultural sector. Without these reforms, there cannot have balanced development of agriculture. If these reforms take place, it will be possible to enhance the country's GDP, increase export earnings, as well as conserve land and water resources. This will help bring order not only in agriculture but also in other productive agriculture allied sector.
However, at present, agriculture is the only economic sector in which the hands of farmers are tied to the system from sowing to final produce int the market. In areas where more than 50 per cent of the population is employed, many agricultural laws are against the interests of farmers. Trapped in the dilemma of these laws, the noose around the necks of indebted farmers is getting tighter, suffocating them and eventually forcing them to walk away from Agriculture.
Key anti-farmer laws
Maximum Farm Land Retention Act
The Maximum Farm Land Retention Act came into force in 1961. The Maximum Farm Land Retention Act sets a limit on the amount of farmland that can be owned by a farmer. The government added a ninth appendix to the constitution to include the Maximum Farm Land Retention Act so that farmers would not go to court against the Maximum Land Retention Act, arguing that fundamental rights had been violated or hesitated. The doors of the court cannot be knocked against the law in Appendix 9. Briefly judged.
Due to the Maximum Land Holding Act, about 85% of the farmers in the country became smallholders; In other words, 85% of the farmers in the country make their living on less than 2.5 acres of land. The Maximum Land Retention Act falls under the purview of the State Government. In Maharashtra, the Maximum Farm Land Retention Act came into force in 1961. The maximum farm land holding limit is different in each state. In Maharashtra, under the Maximum Land Retention Act, the limit has been fixed at 54 acres for dry land and 18 acres for irrigated land.
The Maximum Farm Land Retention Act has nothing to do with the Tenancy Act and the Abolition of Zamindari Act. It is also a sign of nepotism to say that capitalists will take over agricultural land if the maximum farm land retention law is repealed. This is because the Maximum Farm Land Retention Act applies only to farmland. Capitalists are still free to buy other lands. Therefore, only farmers are affected by this law.
The maximum farm land retention law resulted in small chunks of land. The inconsistency created a situation where there were more sellers of agricultural commodities and less regulators due to the Controlled Market Committee Act. This, of course, brought down the prices of agricultural commodities. No matter how hard one try to grow a good crop on two acres, it will not uplift the standard of living of the farmer. Today, in order to compete in the global market, it is necessary to employ the latest technology. However, it is not financially convenient for your farmer to use up-to-date technology on a small piece of his farm.
Essential Commodities Act
Although agriculture was in fact under the jurisdiction of the state, an amendment made in 1955 enabled the central government to have the right to control certain commodities. These initially accommodated some agricultural products such as minerals, cotton, rubber, fodder, hemp. Just two months after the amendment, the government enacted the ordinance.
The purpose of this law is to ensure that essential commodities remain permanently available, products and produce are distributed evenly at reasonable prices, and that the operation of national armed forces continues unhindered. This literally translates to the fact that the government has the power to restrict the production, supply, distribution, price and trade of certain goods.
The list of essential commodities includes coal manufacturing products, animal feed, automotive equipment and spare parts, electrical appliances, cotton textiles, edible oils, iron, steel products, petroleum and allied products, oilseeds, cotton seeds, hemp, fertilizers, crop seeds. Different categories are included. From time to time the government removes some items from the list or adds some new items. Onion is also on this list, pulses are omitted for a certain period of time and put back. There are no criteria in this law for what to include or what to exclude. It depends at the discretion of the government.
The policy commission had recently suggested that agriculture produce should be excluded from the Essential Commodities Act. Originally, the voice of the central government, which has been given the power to decide what is required by the law, should be revoked.
The impact of the Essential Commodities Act, of course, fell on agriculture and caused immeasurable losses to farmers. The feeling that the common man is being served by keeping food prices low has been growing in every government. To appease the growing non-farmer class in the cities, their 'votebank', every government has always hurt the peasantry by subordinating the Commodities Act.
Prices of anything like onions, pulses, sugar have gone up, restrictions have been placed on stockpiling, transportation, prices to keep the urban electorate happy and farmers have been deprived of earning their pot of gold. The government has no such control at microlevel over any other private business except agriculture. The Essential Commodities Act increased the powers of the government bureaucracy and, of course, increased red tape and assists corruption.
As the Essential Commodities Act also includes seeds, the world recognised BT cotton came to India after 15 years. BT cotton seeds could be sown, so farmers had to make big agitations across the states. Now the same thing is happening with GM seeds. The law has led to increased government interference in agriculture.
Land Acquisition Act
In 1894, the British first enacted the Land Acquisition Act. After independence, the government retained the unfettered right of land acquisition by making some changes in paragraphs 18 and 31 of the constitution.
In 1951, in the Shankari Prasad Singh case and in the Sajjan Singh case in 1962, the Supreme Court upheld the government's right to curtail or violate fundamental rights. However, in the case of Golakhnath v. Government of India in 1967, the Supreme Court ruled against the government, saying that the government had no right to curtail or violate the fundamental rights granted to Indian citizens by the Constitution.
In the Keshavanand Bharti case in 1973, the Supreme Court reversed its decision and reaffirmed the government's authority. In the seventies, the government removed the protection that the Constitution had provided to fundamental rights through Article 13. Eventually, the right to property was removed from the list of fundamental rights during the tenure of the Janata Party government and remained only a constitutional right (300-A).
The various governments that came to power later changed the amount of compensation in this regard jus to appease the masses, however retained the right to acquire land. In 2007, the first Land Acquisition Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha. True, it was approved in the Lok Sabha, but not in the Rajya Sabha. A revised bill was introduced again in 2011. Finally, in 2013, the Land Acquisition Act was passed. However, due to objections raised by the industry sector, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and later the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government issued ordinances from time to time. The NDA relaxed the condition of consent imposed by the UPA government and increased the compensation. Such labels are often affixed to public works on the basis of land acquisition laws, and farmers' lands are swindled by fraud through private-public enterprises (PPPs) or private enterprises.
In the country, the government acquired a large number of farmers 'lands and handed them over to the wealthy organisation to setup factories. When the SEZ (Special Economic Zone) project was implemented, the farmers' lands were first acquired at below market prices. Many of these lands did not have SEZ projects even after ten years, on the contrary, many industrialists insisted that those lands should be used for real estate. Putting aside the interests of the farmers, the law was used from time to time only for the benefit of political leaders, administrative officials and industrialists.
Instead of the government taking the initiative to acquire farmers' land for private enterprises or other institutions, why is the land not being negotiated through direct negotiations between farmers and frontline buyers? If land is required for public purpose like road construction, why the government does not fix the rate by negotiating directly with the farmers? Why doesn't the government have a concrete rehabilitation proposal? The question posed by the farmers as to why no judicial or independent mechanism is being set up to ascertain the veracity of the acquisition area determined by the government and the reasons behind it remains unanswered even today.
Expressing the need for repeal of anti-farmer laws, Amar Habib, founder of Kisanputra Andolan, said that Gandhiji did the Champaranya Satyagraha for the government not to interfere in agriculture, what to sow, how to sow, the government does not need to decide. This is exactly what the government does through the Essential Commodities Act and the Maximum Farm Land Retention Act.
The restrictions imposed on the farmer for his business are not visible to any other trader, there are no restrictions on how many factories to set up, how many cricket matches a cricketer should play, how many songs a singer should sing? So why only farmers?
The Maximum Farm Land Retention Act had two main disadvantages - one was the fragmentation of land. In the next two generations, there will be so many small pieces that farming will not be possible. Another thing is that small pieces cannot be invested in agriculture. If agriculture is to flourish, then investment must be made in agriculture. There cannot be investment in small pieces of land. The success stories of agriculture that are coming forward, are very limited, are farmed with the help of non-agricultural money.
Today, the farmer cannot get out of farming, as he has no other option. So he still farms at a loss. Farming at one one point was an option and choice, it has became unavoidable compulsion. The Swaminathan report makes it clear that 40 per cent of the country's farmers want to move out of agriculture. The shares can be distributed by converting the land into shares.
Amar Habib said that some laws related to agriculture are system building while some laws are fraudulent. Laws such as the Maximum Farm Land Retention Act, the Essential Commodities Act, the Land Acquisition Act as well as the prohibition of tribals from selling land to non-tribals are 'law-making laws'.
Some laws are 'fraudulent'. Apparently, they are on the side of the farmers, but these laws only benefit others. For example, a law exempting farmers from income tax. Basically, agriculture is run at such a loss that farmers do not earn enough income to pay income tax. However, because of this law, those who have mountain of black money whiten their black money by showing agricultural income. Subsidies on fertilizers and pipelines have benefited manufacturers and traders, not farmers. These anti-farmer laws have caused immense damage to agriculture and farmers.
The common misconception (misunderstanding?) Is that farmers get concessions, subsidies, do not pay income tax. In reality, however, without giving the necessary things to improve agriculture, which is of no benefit to the farmers, and good deeds are done in the name of the farmers. Of the farmers who committed suicide, 94 per cent had no source of income other than farming. Today, all those whose father was a farmer and whose name is in Satbara (7/12 document), call themselves farmers today and boil down to benefits like debt waiver, income tax relief. The farmer needs to be defined as 'the farmer who has no other means of income except agriculture'. Habib also expressed the right expectation that such people should get the concessions given to them.
The country can afford to impose a new pay commission on government employees, pay bonuses, no one seems to object to the billions of rupees paid by ordinary citizens, so why is there so much damage done to farmers 'hard-earned farm produce, farmers' land?
Makrand Doijad, an agricultural law scholar and leader of the Constitution Literacy Movement, has recently filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking repeal of anti-farmer laws. Explaining how Article 31B of the Constitution has closed the doors of progress to farmers, he said that no other country in the world has such a cruel, insidious, horrible and monstrous provision as Article 31B. This Article 31B directly violates the constitutional oaths in Articles 13 (2), 14, 19 (a), 21, 32, 60 and the Third Schedule to the Constitution. (Let us see exactly what these laws are - 13 (2): Laws depriving citizens of their basic rights cannot be enacted by the state or the central government, 14: All will be equal before the law, 19 (a). Freedom of expression, 21: Freedom of life and person, 32: If the state or central government enacts laws depriving citizens of their basic rights, Those laws can be appealed to the Supreme Court, and laws that deprive citizens of their basic rights will be overturned by the Supreme Court. 60: I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution established by the President's Oath-Act. 3rd Schedule: Sample Oaths: Ministers and MPs- I will have true faith and faith in the Constitution established by law.)
All the above basic provisions of the Constitution were struck down by Article 31B. The same monstrous 31B provision further undermined the fundamental right of ordinary farmers to seek justice in the courts. Appendix 9, which was enacted for 13 laws only to destroy landlordism. By the end of 1995, about 250 anti-farmer laws which had nothing to do with landlordism were repealed. Deprived, these questions were raised by Makrand Doijad. Suicide of farmers, he said, in order to prevent and liberate farmers, the unjust, cruel and insidious Article 31B inserted in the Constitution must be repealed, as the essence of Schedule 9 is in Article 31B.
Farmers do not have any freedom to choose what to sow, where to sell, at what rate, how much land they should own. These restrictions will not only alleviate the loss of agriculture and the plight of farmers by providing subsidies and concessions, but will also bring better days to farmers if anti-farmer laws are broken. These laws have deprived farmers of their right to property. These laws are violating the basic right of the farmers to live with dignity and therefore the suicides of the farmers are the victims of the system.
Post a Comment