(Dr Raghava Gundavarapu)
The most important possession of a country is its population. If this is maintained in good health and vigor everything else will follow; if this is allowed, to decline, nothing, not even great riches, can save the country from eventual ruin.
Soil fertility- one of the most important assets of any country. If it is lost it will lead to the use of Artificial manures, lead inevitably to artificial nutrition, artificial food, artificial animals, and finally to artificial men and women.
Artificial plants, artificial animals, and artificial men are unhealthy and can only be protected from parasites by means of poison sprays, vaccines, and serums, and an expensive system of patent medicines, panel doctors, hospitals, and so forth.
Sir Albert Howard (8 December 1873 – 20 October 1947) Father of Organic Farming, wrote this in the year 1939. How apt is it for the present scenario, in the time of the COVID 19 pandemic?
Biodiversity from farm to thali, from the soil to our gut, Microbiome contributes to our nutrition and health. This biodiversity of food helped the Indian population to combat the COVID 19 Pandemic.
The United Nations Environmental program calls for sustainable agriculture to combat Climate Change. At a time when the whole world is looking for sustainable farming, it will be stupidity for us to go for corporate farming. This will be the first reason for me to reject the three proposed farm laws.
India has been thriving in the agriculture economy despite the fact that the majority of farmland-holdings are smaller, less than 3 acres per farmer. Hinduism never believed in one center of power, hence was against large holdings of land.
Even when India was the richest nation in the world, its agriculture and business were smallholdings. The Hindu word Dharma means sustainability to be it either agriculture, business, or any other profession.
The new laws are aimed at making few people ultra-rich and millions lose their sustainable living. This situation is like that of new textile mills that came up in Manchester during the British rule. After the commencing of the Mills in Manchester, most of the cotton produced in India was taken to England, processed, and brought back, and sold in India for cheap prices.
This destroyed the livelihoods of many weavers in India, which led to suicides of farmers in huge numbers as they were out of work, out of food hence suicides. Swami Vivekananda was bold enough to ask them in England about their motives. Because of the textile mills, here, a few hundred are becoming rich, but millions in India are starving and have lost their livelihoods.
Now let us go into the bills.
Chapter 3: Dispute Resolution. If any dispute resolution takes place the farmer should appeal with the Tahsildar, then Revenue Divisional Officer, then the District Collector, then Joint Secretary level officer of the Government of India.
Is it possible, that a poor farmer, spent his time 6 months in the fields to produce his harvest run around the above offices for another six months to get his money? Above all that spend his hard-earned money to pay the lawyers to represent his case to the above-said officials.
The other problem comes in chapter 5 of the above-said act.
All the actions taken by the above officers (the corrupt bureaucracy we have) are to be held in good faith and not to tried in a court of law. So the rate that the farmer gets is in the hands of the corrupt bureaucracy.
Apart from this The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, removes cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onions, and potatoes from the list of essential commodities, the term called Minimum Support Price has been abolished. When the Government is deciding the prices of oil on day to day basis, why can’t a farmer who toiled so hard get a support price for his produce?
The provision, freedom to produce, hold, move, distribute, and supply, will lead the farmer into a direct collision course with the international giants rather than getting support from them.
Here the biggest problem is the WTO agreement. The big countries killed the small farming in the developing countries and how those laws are favoring the rich countries.
This is an example of how the corporates, in the western countries like in the US, produce a kg of Rs.110, the government pays the corporates (previously farmers) Rs. 130 and dump that commodity in the international market for Rs.30. The Government is paying an additional Rs.20 to the actual production cost to the producer in the form of a subsidy. The small farmers in India can produce that same commodity at Rs. 70/kg. The Indian farmer can’t compete with the international price as the commodity is made available in the international market.
What happens is that the big corporates (D Mart, Reliance) buy in the international market at the Rs. 30/kg, and initially sell at Rs. 60/kg, while the local traders can’t compete with the prices that the corporates offer, because the minimum cost of production for the Indian farmer is far higher at Rs. 70/kg. This is the reason why the prices in D Mart, Reliance, etc are much lower than in the Kirana shop.
Slowly, with the visible price variation, most of the people get used to the Hypermarkets which ultimately endanger the Kirana Shops.
Then the corporates unleash their true intent and get abnormal profits. Because of this, you are going to kill the livelihoods of the farmers, as most of them would have stopped farming, sold their farms to the corporates. Once the farmers stop farming, the local traders and the local Kirana shops will lose their livelihood. The ultimate sufferer will be the consumer because once the competition is been eliminated, the price that these hypermarkets dictate is final.
When monopoly has been established the corporates go for higher and abnormal profits, thereby burdening the poor, middle-class families. This is the reason for the flood of FDI into Reliance retail.
(Dr Raghava Gundavarapu is a practicing doctor from Ongole, Andhra Pradesh)