Why are farmers of Haryana and Punjab protesting?

Three Ordinances have been passed by the Centre:

1. The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) ordinance, 2020

2. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020

3. The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020

But the farmers are against these ordinances. Why?

Farmers expressed their outrage over the passage of these ordinances by the Centre which they call as “anti-farmer” They believe the ordinances will lead to the destruction of the peasants & will expose them to the whims of the market forces.

1 The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, seeks to give freedom to farmers and traders to sale and purchase of their choice. It promotes the inter-state and intra-state sale of farmers’ produce outside the local markets.

2 The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 seeks to frame national guidelines for trade agreements between farmers & agri-business firms, processors, wholesalers, exporters or large retailers for farm services & sale of future farming produce at a mutually agreed remunerative price framework.

3. The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020, seeks to amend the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 that empowers the central government to control the production, supply, distribution, trade, and commerce in certain commodities.

What do farmers have to say?

The farmers say that these bills will lay the foundation for suspension of the minimum support price (MSP) system. They also fear that the traditional grain market system will be finished and small farmers will suffer loses as they won’t be able to seal an agreement with big retailers or wholesale buyers.

What is Government Saying!! The government is of the view that these Bills are pro-farmers and will open new businesses opportunities for farmers that will result in higher prices of their produce and hence increased income.

Farmers also fear that once big private companies will enter the agriculture sector, they will capture it and traditional wholesale markets will shut. What is your say on this?

#farmersprotest

✍️Subin suresh

Last few days we heard lot of news about massive farmers movement in Delhi border against the three controversial bill that passed by Indian parliament. This is a spectacular example for so-called non political movement.

This not the first time in the history our independence our farmers are protesting against the government. If we search our history way back to 70’s we can find lot of such massive agitations against the government. Bhart kisan union founded by the Chaudary charan singh was the one of the non political organisation standing for the welfare of the farmers which conducted such massive movements against the congress led government.

The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) was a popular movement that was very popular among farmers in India in the 1970s. Although they received in part the benefits of the development troop, they had numerous complaints against the government and political parties. They staged protests in the 1980s against government policies. It was the economically better off peasants who joined the protest in these peasant struggles. In January 1988, about 20,000 farmers gathered in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Their aim was to protest against the government’s decision to increase electricity tariffs, and farmers stayed outside the district collector’s office for three weeks until their demand was accepted. The peasant agitation in Meerut was quite disciplined. Villagers in the vicinity of the protesters had been delivering food on time until the end of the strike. The Meerut agitation also demonstrated the strength of the rural peasantry. The farmers in the Meerut agitation were members of the Indian Kisan Union (BKU). The Indian Kisan Union is an organization of farmers from western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The organization played a key role in the peasant movements of the 1980s. Farmers in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh benefited greatly from the government’s ‘green revolution’ policies, and sugarcane and wheat became the major cash crops in the region. But by the mid-1980s, the marketing of e-cash crops was in crisis. The crisis was caused by the process of liberalization of the Indian economy. . Other farmers ‘organizations in the country have put forward similar demands, including that the government should fix higher floor prices for sugarcane and wheat, lift restrictions on inter-state movement of agricultural produce, guarantee electricity supply at reasonable rates, write off arrears on agricultural loans and introduce farmers’ pensions. The ‘Shetkari sanghatana’ in Maharashtra has declared that the farmers’ movement is a war waged by the rural agrarian sector against the urban industrial sector. ‘The old controversy over the importance of industry or agriculture in India’s development model was once again active in the 1980s, when liberalization threatened the economic and agricultural sectors and revived the old controversy. Characteristics The working methods of the Indian Kisan Union had certain features.

Maharashtra finally has a government in place after more than a month-long impasse over the government formation, following the declaration of Assembly election results. Signalling the germination of—what is being read as—anti-BJPism in the country, diametrically opposite political parties, Shiv Sena, the Congress, and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) formed a government in the state. Despite their decades-old alliance and ideological convergence, the Shiv Sena and the BJP snapped ties over the coveted chief minister post. Haryana has been a smooth sail for the BJP, with the Jannayak Janata Party extending support to form a government after the former fell short of the required numbers. This big picture of the routine “democratic” exercise appears fair and simple, and it seemingly appears that one need not have any qualms about the fairness and, more importantly, the representative character of our deeply-valued democracy. But, as it is often said, the devil lies in the detail. A closer look at the vote shares and corresponding seat shares secured by parties in power and in the opposition raise important questions about the very nature of our democracy, which has become largely majoritarian in nature. 

In Maharashtra, the BJP secured 25.7% popular vote and has been rewarded with 105 seats in the 288-member assembly, accounting for 36.45% of the seats. Its pre-poll and now-estranged ally, the Shiv Sena, garnered 16.41% of the total votes polled and secured 56 seats (19.44% seats). Similar is the case with the NCP, which won 56 seats (18.75%) corresponding to its 16.71% vote share. One can observe that the three parties have been over-rewarded in number of seats as against their corresponding vote shares. However, this is not the case with the smaller parties in the fray, namely the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, which won two seats (0.69%) for its 1.34% vote share and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena that won one seat (0.34%) to its corresponding 2.25% vote share. The same pattern is reflected in Haryana, where the Congress and the BJP have been over-rewarded compared to the smaller parties, which have been under-rewarded, in terms of seats (Election Commission of India 2019). One can categorically state that there has been no proportionality in terms of votes polled and seats secured, and this is the direct result of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system. India adopted the FPTP electoral system and continues to hold on to it, while other multicultural societies across the world follow a proportional representation (PR) electoral system to reflect the heterogeneity of their demography and political aspirations.   

The FPTP is a fairly simple electoral system where the winning candidate from a constituency (electoral district) need not secure more than 50% of the total votes polled to claim popular support, but only enough votes to push their opponents behind. This means, for instance, that a candidate emerges as a winner with 23% votes as long as their opponents secure less than them individually, and it does not matter if the aggregate votes polled against amount to 77%. More often than not, with the proliferation of parties and candidates, elections across the world, and even in India, see candidates elected to legislative bodies with less than 50% of the total votes polled. Consequently, as the above example points out, the expression of 77% of voters is not reflected in the election and even in the said elected representative. This anomaly of not being representative enough is the basic character of the FPTP, along with the concomitant negative effects—accentuation of existing fault lines in the society and money becoming the precondition to contest in elections—which result from such “winner-takes-all” elections attacking the very essence of our democracy. 

Maharashtra finally has a government in place after more than a month-long impasse over the government formation, following the declaration of Assembly election results. Signalling the germination of—what is being read as—anti-BJPism in the country, diametrically opposite political parties, Shiv Sena, the Congress, and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) formed a government in the state. Despite their decades-old alliance and ideological convergence, the Shiv Sena and the BJP snapped ties over the coveted chief minister post. Haryana has been a smooth sail for the BJP, with the Jannayak Janata Party extending support to form a government after the former fell short of the required numbers. This big picture of the routine “democratic” exercise appears fair and simple, and it seemingly appears that one need not have any qualms about the fairness and, more importantly, the representative character of our deeply-valued democracy. But, as it is often said, the devil lies in the detail. A closer look at the vote shares and corresponding seat shares secured by parties in power and in the opposition raise important questions about the very nature of our democracy, which has become largely majoritarian in nature. 

In Maharashtra, the BJP secured 25.7% popular vote and has been rewarded with 105 seats in the 288-member assembly, accounting for 36.45% of the seats. Its pre-poll and now-estranged ally, the Shiv Sena, garnered 16.41% of the total votes polled and secured 56 seats (19.44% seats). Similar is the case with the NCP, which won 56 seats (18.75%) corresponding to its 16.71% vote share. One can observe that the three parties have been over-rewarded in number of seats as against their corresponding vote shares. However, this is not the case with the smaller parties in the fray, namely the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, which won two seats (0.69%) for its 1.34% vote share and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena that won one seat (0.34%) to its corresponding 2.25% vote share. The same pattern is reflected in Haryana, where the Congress and the BJP have been over-rewarded compared to the smaller parties, which have been under-rewarded, in terms of seats (Election Commission of India 2019). One can categorically state that there has been no proportionality in terms of votes polled and seats secured, and this is the direct result of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system. India adopted the FPTP electoral system and continues to hold on to it, while other multicultural societies across the world follow a proportional representation (PR) electoral system to reflect the heterogeneity of their demography and political aspirations.   

The FPTP is a fairly simple electoral system where the winning candidate from a constituency (electoral district) need not secure more than 50% of the total votes polled to claim popular support, but only enough votes to push their opponents behind. This means, for instance, that a candidate emerges as a winner with 23% votes as long as their opponents secure less than them individually, and it does not matter if the aggregate votes polled against amount to 77%. More often than not, with the proliferation of parties and candidates, elections across the world, and even in India, see candidates elected to legislative bodies with less than 50% of the total votes polled. Consequently, as the above example points out, the expression of 77% of voters is not reflected in the election and even in the said elected representative. This anomaly of not being representative enough is the basic character of the FPTP, along with the concomitant negative effects—accentuation of existing fault lines in the society and money becoming the precondition to contest in elections—which result from such “winner-takes-all” elections attacking the very essence of our democracy. 

A History of the Unrepresentative Indian Democracy

Despite being praised world over for its democracy, India suffers from all the negative implications emerging from the adoption of the FPTP. Analysing all general elections from 1952 to 2019, no government at the centre had crossed the 50% mark to claim the absolute majority of the voters to claim popular support. 

Surprisingly, this trend was also found when the Congress was in an invincible position during the first five Lok Sabha elections from 1952 to 1971. The vote share of the Congress hovered around 45% even when there was a lack of formidable opposition to counter it. This was also witnessed when the Congress was overthrown in 1977 for the first time after independence by the hurriedly-formed alliance under the Janata Party in the aftermath of the Emergency. The Janata Party government, formed with an alliance of seven parties, also managed to secure only 41% of the votes. The same was reflected when the coalition governments of the National Front, the National Democratic Alliance, and the United Progressive Alliance governments were formed. Interestingly, even when the BJP has emerged as the central pole in Indian politics, its vote shares in 2014 and 2019 stood at 31.34% and 37.36% respectively.  

The FPTP and Majoritarian Politics   

With the requirement to win elections becoming lower and lower vote shares as more candidates/parties are entering the fray, political parties have resorted to consolidating certain vote banks at the cost of completely alienating other groups, which they see as impediments to their electoral success. 

Although it is not as if this is a new revelation, or that only one party can be accused of pandering to the interests of select communities, but with the BJP at the helm from 2014 and the rise in the Hindu majoritarianism, Muslims are being systematically kept away from the power structures. In 2014, the BJP fielded only six Muslim candidates in the 482 seats it had contested, and none made it to the Lok Sabha. Despite emerging as the largest party in 2014 general elections, the BJP did not have a single Muslim Member of Parliament (MP) (Economic Times 2019). To stave off the criticism of being anti-Muslim, the Modi government had to appoint two Muslim MPs from Rajya Sabha in its cabinet. Consequently, India saw the lowest representation of Muslim MPs (23 in number) in the history of independent India in the Lok Sabha in 2014, and none of these was from the BJP. Even from Uttar Pradesh, where Muslims account for 18% of the population, not a single Muslim MP was elected to the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 (Jafferlot 2019). In 2019, there was a marginal improvement in the situation with the tally of Muslim MPs in Lok Sabha rising to 27 and the BJP having a lone MP from West Bengal (Scroll 2019). This is to say that, in an atmosphere of Hindu majoritarianism, parties other than the BJP have also pre-emptively decreased the number of Muslim MPs they fielded so as to not be dubbed as anti-Hindu and Muslim-appeasing, except in Muslim-majority constituencies. This does not bode well for India’s multireligious and multicultural society. 

In a way, there is a direct correlation between the FPTP and the systematic isolation of select communities and consolidation of particular communities. In addition to this, the money and muscle power of the larger parties means that the politically smaller and marginal groups will continue to be relegated into the background.

നമ്മുടെ ജനായത്ത സമ്പ്രദായത്തിന്റ്റെ ചരിത്രത്തിൽ ഇത്രയധികം തലകുനിക്കപ്പെട്ടു നിന്ന നാളുകൾ എന്റെയും നിങ്ങളുടെയും ഓർമ്മകളിൽ പോലും ഉണ്ടാകാൻ വഴിയില്ല.

സ്വജന പക്ഷപാതവും അഴിമതിയും കെടുകാര്യസ്ഥതയുടെയും അഞ്ചു വർഷങ്ങൾ ആണ് കഴിഞ്ഞുപോകുന്നത് മൂന്ന് മഹാപ്രളയങ്ങളും കോറോണയും വരുത്തിവെച്ച രാഷ്ട്രീയ സാമൂഹിക പ്രതിസന്ധികളുടെ നടുവിലൂടെ കടന്നുപോകുന്ന സംസ്ഥാനത്തെ ജനങ്ങളുടെ ഇച്ഛാശക്തിയു ക്ഷമയും ചോദ്യം ചെയ്യുന്ന സമീപനമാണ് സർക്കാർ സ്വീകരിക്കുന്നത്.

എൻ എസ് മാധവൻ പറഞ്ഞതുപോലെ പ്രളയവും പ്രണയവും തമ്മിലുള്ള വ്യത്യാസം ഒരക്ഷരം മാത്രമാണ് മറ്റൊരു പ്രളയകാലത്തിന്റ്റെ ഭീഷണി നമ്മെ വിട്ട് ഒഴിയുമ്പോൾ ആശങ്കകൾ മാത്രം ആണ് അവശേഷിക്കുന്നത്. പ്രളയത്തെ പ്രണയിക്കുവാൻ നാം പഠിച്ചു കഴിഞ്ഞു.

ഭരണഘടനാ സ്ഥാപനമായ പിഎസ്സിയുടെ വിശ്വാസ്യതയെ പോലും ചോദ്യം ചെയ്യപ്പെടുന്ന നാളുകളാണ് കടന്നുപോകുന്നത്.

കേരളത്തിൻറെ തെരുവോരങ്ങളിൽ തൊഴിലന്വേഷിച്ച് പിടഞ്ഞുവീഴുന്ന യുവത്വത്തെയാണ് നാം കാണുന്നത്.

പങ്കാളിത്ത പെൻഷനെതിരെയും പെൻഷൻ പ്രായം വർദ്ധിപ്പിക്കുന്നത്എതിരെ സമരം ചെയ്ത അധികാരത്തിൽ വന്ന ഇടതു സർക്കാർ ഇപ്പോൾ ചെയ്യുന്നത് തികച്ചും വൈരുധൃപരമായ സമീപനമാണ്.

ഞാൻ പഠിച്ച സ്കൂളിൽ പോലും സ്കൂൾ അടച്ചിട്ടു സമരം ചെയ്ത അധ്യാപക സംഘടനകൾ ഒക്കെ മൗനത്തിന്റെ നിശബ്ദതയുടെയും നിലാകയങ്ങൾ വെടിഞ്ഞ് കേരളത്തിലെ യുവാക്കളുടെ പ്രശ്ന പരിഹാരത്തിനായി നേരിട്ട് ഇറങ്ങണം. അര പട്ടിനിക്കരന്റെയും മുഴുപട്ടിനികരന്റെയും ഭവന പദ്ധതിയായ ലൈഫിനെ അഴിമതിയുടെ ദുർഗന്ധത്തിൽ നിർത്തിയ സർക്കാരിന് അധികാരത്തിൽ തുടരാൻ അർഹത ഉണ്ടോ എന്ന് അവർ സ്വയം ആത്മ പരിശോധന നടത്തണം. യു എ ഇ റെക്രസെന്റിനുപോലും അപമാനം ആണ് ഈ സർക്കാർ.
കൊറോണ മൂലം തൊഴിൽ നഷ്ടമായ പ്രവാസികളുടെ പുനരധിവാസം ഒരു ചോദ്യ ചിഹ്നം ആയി നിലനിൽക്കുന്നു. ഉത്സവ കാലത്തിന്റെ ആരവങ്ങളിലേക്ക് നാം കടക്കുമ്പോൾ അസംഘടിത മേഖലകളിലെ തൊഴിലാളികളുടെ ജീവിതം പച്ച പിടിപ്പിക്കുന്നതിനു വേണ്ടി എന്താണ് സർകാർ ചെയ്തത്. കേരള ചരിത്രത്തിലാദ്യമായി തീവ്ര വാദ ബന്ധം ഉള്ള ഒരു സ്വർണ്ണക്കടത്ത് കേസ് മുഖിയ മന്ത്രിയുടെ ഓഫീസിലേക്ക് എത്തി നിൽക്കുന്നു. ഇൗ പ്രതിസന്ധി കാലഘത്തിലും സംസ്ഥാനത്തെ ജനങ്ങളെ കൊള്ളയടിക്കുന്ന ഇൗ സർക്കാരിനെതിരെ വർഗ്ഗ സമരങ്ങൾ തീർക്കുകയാണ് വേണ്ടത്.
ഇത്തരത്തിലുള്ള കെടുകാര്യസ്ഥതയും അഴിമതിയുടെയും ഉത്തരവാദിത്വം ഏറ്റെടുത്ത് മുഖൃമന്ത്രി രാജി വെക്കുകയാണ് വേണ്ടത്. ഇന്ന് മുതുവിള കോൺഗ്രസ്സ് മണ്ഡലം കമ്മിറ്റി സെക്രട്ടറി ശ്രീ സന്തോഷ് പരപ്പിലിൻെറ നേതൃത്വത്തിൽ നടന്ന ഉപവാസ സമരം നമ്മുടെ നാടിന്റെ തന്നെ സർക്കാരിന് എതിരെയുള്ള പ്രതിക്ഷേതത്തിന്റെ സ്വരം ആണ് രേഖപ്പെടുത്തുന്നത്.