These bills have nothing to do with the prosperity of the farmers: - Bakiu | time today

The farmers held a complete shutdown in the country in protest against the three agricultural bills passed by the central government. National and state highways were completely closed in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh. 80 in Bijnor, western Uttar Pradesh, 11 in Muzaffarnagar, 3 in Shamli, 5 in Saharanpur, 2 in Ghaziabad, 2 in Noida, 4 in Hapur, 9 in Meerut, 10 in Moradabad, 3 in Shahjahanpur, 2 in Rampur, Mainpur, Chakka was jammed all over the state including Agra, Mathura, Aligarh.In Haryana, Punjab, all institutions including markets remained closed. In the bandh, National President of Bharatiya Kisan Union Naresh Tikait joined Panipat-Khatima Road Lalukhedi Muzaffarnagar, National Spokesperson Chak Rakesh Tikait joined National Highway 58 Rampur Tiraha, Navela Kothi, Rohana Chowki Muzaffarnagar. Bharatiya Kisan Union Haryana State President Ratan Singh Mann was involved in Kaithal and Karnal. Caretaker State President of Punjab Harendra Singh Lakhowal was present in Ludhiana.

The Bharatiya Kisan Union is a non-political organization of farmers, represented in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal, including North India.

The Indian Farmers Union, along with many other farmer organizations in the country, is seriously concerned about the anti-farmer bills, which are undemocratic, without any parliamentary discussion, without consultation with any farmer organizations, emergency measures of the ordinance. Are brought suddenly through We oppose both the process and the essence of bringing these bills.

We farmers have been demanding fair and remunerative prices for the last four decades. The BJP government had made an election promise to double the income of farmers. Instead of fulfilling that promise, we are being slapped by these bills passed to abolish the responsibility of governments to ensure fair prices to farmers.In a complete way, these bills have nothing to do with improving the income of farmers, of which more than 80 percent are small and marginal farmers. Instead, they will strengthen agribusiness and increase corporate control over our food systems, leaving no room for justice for farmers and consumers.

We briefly express our opposition to each of these bills below: -

1. The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 This bill is designed to gradually eliminate the APMC system through the 'One Country, Two Markets' approach. The government is insisting that the APMC system will still remain and this bill is creating only one additional 'business sector' without trade and taxes.But, when two separate and parallel marketing systems are created, one with regulation and taxes, and one without it, it is clear that private players, agents and traders will choose the latter system, which over time will allow APMC Will make it redundant. This, in itself, would lead to the slow death of APMC. Till date, despite the existence of APMC, only 36 percent of production was traded within APMC.There is a huge shortage of mandis across the country. We agree that these APMCs have many problems, but they should have been rectified. The APMC model has worked well for farmers in states like Punjab and Haryana. This could be replicated across the country for various crops with improvements in existing deficiencies, where farmers would be provided with an MSP with a guarantee.At least in APMC, we farmers could organize and defend ourselves against various forms of exploitation. This will not be the case for irregular business areas. There is no guarantee that prices above the MSP will be paid in these unregulated markets.Looking at the current example of Bihar, where APMC was removed with great fanfare in 2006, a decade later, we see that farmers have received much lower prices than MSP! Therefore, we demand that our right to the price of remuneration is our guarantee and not allow completely unregulated markets.

2. The Essential Commodities Act (Amendment) Bill 2020 This bill will allow private players and agribusiness companies to hoard and market manipulation. The government claims that this bill will increase investment in post-harvest infrastructure and improve the income of farmers. But even before this bill, there was no restriction on stockholding on farmers. To prevent hoarding and betting of food, private institutions had limits and controls only. In the name of farmers, this bill will help agribusiness companies like Adani and Reliance to buy all our produce at low prices, or worse, import from other countries and freeze large amounts freely because of any limit on storage Will not happen. They can easily manipulate the markets and make huge profits with such huge storage, which the government will have no idea about. The poor will suffer the most due to such hoarding, betting and fluctuations in food prices across the country. The government is clearly protecting the interests of big private players / traders and they will benefit the most.

3. Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Price Assurance and Agricultural Services Bill Agreement, 2020 Most of the farmers in India are small and marginal holdings, many of whom are illiterate. The system of contract farming with farmers in India is mostly unwritten and therefore cannot be implemented. Even when they are written, farmers do not always understand what is written in those agreements.Individual farmers are still weak compared to a large company.Such contracts, often focused towards market-oriented commodities that require intensive farming, simultaneously compromise ecology. Evidence suggests that "sponsors" do not like to deal with many small and marginal farmers and are only interested in working with medium and large farmers.When such players do not fulfill contracts, farmers have no ability to drag them into contention, especially when most contracts are unwritten and unrecoverable. This bill makes the entire contract voluntary, it is also not mandatory that written and formal agreements be made!The Bill has nothing to do with empowering farmers, it will only weaken them further. The bill has a so-called "production agreement" as a proxy route to allow direct corporate farming, which makes farmers laborers on their own farms. Which makes stringent demands on farmers to meet exacting standards without any minimum support price guarantee. This clause will allow for third party enforcement for the protection of corporates.

  New laws passed by the government will destroy Indian agriculture and millions of people connected to it. This step will facilitate the handing over of the entire agricultural sector to large agricultural professionals. It will promote giant corporations (corporations) to abolish the minimum support price of farmers, completely destroy the public distribution system, promote unscrupulous traders and freeze food items.This will create a shortage of food artificially in the market and will lead to irregular prices. These laws threaten India's food sovereignty and security. Farmers need the freedom to fix the price of their produce and not the freedom to sell their produce to large corporates.

There is an appeal to all farmers to unite to save farming and ensure the food sovereignty and security of the nation. The next strategy will be announced soon by discussing with all organizations. After the chakka jam, a memorandum was submitted in the name of the Prime Minister of the country at 4 o'clock demanding withdrawal of all the three bills and enacting minimum support price.