New Farm Bills and Farmers’ Resistance to Neoliberalism

Abstract

The farmers’ movement of 2020–2021, which lasted for more than a year has been one of the largest in the history of independent India. It marked a spectacular success in its resistance to neoliberalism and the corporatisation of Indian agriculture. Hundreds of thousands of farmers marched to and camped at the borders of Delhi, India’s capital, and forced the union government to repeal the three farm laws, which were understood to be a likely ‘death warrant’ for farmers. The three controversial farm laws were designed to liberalise India’s agriculture markets, but farmers’ unions and other critics alleged that the three laws would offer an advantage to big corporations at farmers’ expense. In the thick of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, farmers sustained their more than yearlong protests and finally forced the neoliberal, hard-right Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to back down. It seems that the farmers’ movement has put a check on the march of neoliberalism, though temporarily, and brought back the farm issues and agrarian polity to the forefront of national politics after three decades. The trigger for the farmers’ mobilisation was the repealed three laws, which were passed in September 2020 by the union government and expected to bring ‘revolutionary’ changes to agriculture: The Farmers’Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020; The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020. Together, these laws were designed to change the existing regulatory framework of agriculture. However, the farmers accused the government of avoiding its responsibility to ensure farm produce is acquired at the minimum support price (MSP). Farmers feared that these so-called reforms would leave them at the mercy of corporations that could now enter India’s farming sector with no government safeguards in place. Farmers also feared that they would ultimately lose their land, which was not only their most important asset but also the basis of their identity, heritage and self-esteem. Clearly, farmers and farmers’ unions saw these laws as an attack on their livelihoods and identity.