For the last few days opposition parties are protesting against the Farm Bills- 2020 which is a combination of three bills Farmers Produce Trade & Commerce ( Promotion & Facilitation) Bill, Farmers (Empowerment & Protection ) agreement on price assurance and farm services bill and lastly Essential Commodities Amendment bill. Agriculture sector contributes to 15% of the Indian economy.
In this blog we will discuss what’s really in this bills that Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the union cabinet and Celebrity like Diljit Dosanjh voiced for the farmers. To know the effect on the farm sector you have to know slightly that how the farm sector works. From 1965 the Agricultural produce market committee shortly known as APMC was there. First the farmer produce crops in the field then it goes to government regulated APMC mandies. Here the price discovery of the crops and auctioning of the crops happens. And if the middleman does not buy the crops it will directly be bought by the government and farmers will get the minimum support price or shortly known as MSP.
But with the implementation of this new bill farmers have a option to sell their products to the private players. Their was inter state regulations for selling the farm products but now it is over. Farmers can sell their crops in different state in our country. Because of this middleman or APMC agents will lose 2.5% of their commission. State government will lose revenues earned from the middleman. At one part it is visible that the exploitation, Monopoly of the Middleman will end but in another part of the thing will tell us that monopoly, exploitation of corporates can began.
With the weakening of APMC the price discovery will be difficult. Farmers are fearing the fear of losing the MSP because of that they came to the streets in many areas. But the government have assured that APMC will not be scraped only the monopoly of APMC will end. The main measurement of the effect of this bill will be measured in the month of october when kharif crop arrivals is at peak. If the trade shifts out of the APMC market to the corporation majorly then what happened to BSNL, MTNL will now happen to APMC. And monopoly in any sector specially in a sector like farming by any corporation will not deliver good results in the future.
This type of reforms was previously implemented by Bihar, Maharashtra like state governments which did not resulted greatly. These states specially maharashtra saw a long Kisan long march and kisan movements. We can only say priority of any government decision on the farm sectors should be farmers and their livelihood.
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