What India's farmers want
🌎 A Q&A with Bangalore-based researcher Poonam Pandey.
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“Farmers come back to the idea of dignity and identity.”
Mass protests across India over the government’s proposed agricultural reforms have been escalating since September. There was a clash with police in January when farmers stormed the Red Fort (Guardian + DW), in spite of attempts to quell the unrest.
Then about two weeks ago, the movement grabbed the global spotlight for a brief moment. A single tweet by pop superstar Rihanna drew attention to the unrest; Greta Thunberg followed, tweeting her support for the farmers. The government wasn’t pleased about either intervention (Guardian + Guardian). A local young climate activist, Disha Ravi, took the hit.
This fallout got a lot of attention. But there’s also been a fair bit of analysis of what the protest is all about. The angles are plentiful—from exploration of its ecological roots to its links with the Green Revolution, energy and climate change, and many, many more. It’s a complex affair, with no easy solutions, and the movement continues to gain wide support.
Poonam Pandey’s point of view in this op-ed for the UK Institute of Development Studies (IDS) struck me as particularly insightful.
Pandey talks to farmers for her research on agriculture and other issues at the intersection of technology, development and policy. Based at the DST-Centre for Policy Research of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, she is also collaborating with IDS on a project that looks at the narratives around the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India.
In this interview with WorldWise, Pandey expands on her viewpoint and teases apart a number of strands tied up with this movement. Our conversation—as usual edited for clarity and brevity—touched on the farmers’ demands, the history that led to this moment (yup, the c-word comes up), what science has to do with it, and why the crisis is a risk for India’s food security.
AM: A lot has been written about what's behind the protests. What do you think is fundamentally what farmers want—what does it come down to?
PP: In order to know what farmers want, it would be very important to actually talk to [them]. My understanding is that farmers actually want two things—and these are long-standing demands. First, they want fair and remunerative prices for the food they produce. Second, there has to be a dignified treatment of agriculture in the broader imagination of public policy in the country. This [protest] is happening [now] because these farm bills, as understood by the farmers, would cut down the possibility of a dialogue further, in this regard.
Why do I say that they want a dignified treatment: because at various instances you would have seen that farmers come back to the idea of what is the dignity and identity of a farmer—be it rejecting the food that was offered by the government at one time [during the protests], or bringing their own food, or even in feeding people who are protesting for them.
Take us through the history of this—in your op-ed you say it can be traced back to India's Green Revolution.
The whole British history about colonial exploitation of agriculture—of course they built multiple institutions, but most were to develop cash crops that could be taken back to the Empire, like sugar, cotton and so on. After India got independence, a lot of challenges arose. A focus on agricultural policy was toned down. There was this general concern that India should move to the path of industrialisation, and [that] agriculture should actually feed industrialisation. Eventually, production of different crops declined and population grew. At one time, India was borrowing food from the US. And through American research organisations, there were new varieties of wheat and rice, where these varieties would produce more in response to high inputs of chemical fertilisers and irrigation. [This] was then eventually called Green Revolution.
But a major component of the Green Revolution strategy was to say that, whatever the farmers were doing was old knowledge—that their traditional knowledge is not going to work. And not just in agriculture: the overall understanding of Indian policymakers at that time was—and to a certain extent it was right—that you have to choose a path of science. It was thought that traditional agriculture is ‘outdated’. The idea of the modern farmer [is] somebody who could adopt and accept what the scientific system or organisations were telling them. And so this process of delegitimisation started from that. Whoever [was] associated to the traditional method was considered as backward. [This] bound the farmers in a certain image, and eventually many practices were lost.
Definitely [the Green Revolution] did lead to an increase in production. But this delegitimisation eventually led to the deskilling of farmers. And now they are mostly dependent—for information, knowledge—on the scientific system. This process keeps on going. So whenever a new technology has to be introduced, it's always said “the farmers have to be taught”. The delegitimisation makes space for the state or the private agencies to intervene. And this is how the government is justifying these [new] rules—because “we knew what is best for the farmers”.
What you’re describing is a long-term process. What has precipitated this moment—why are the farmers reacting now?
Different kinds of protests are going on for a very long time. The protests that happened [previously] did not have that much of power. There were for example huge protests in Maharashtra two to three years ago, but it was very peaceful and more or less went unnoticed. [But] when these farm bills were passed, they directly affected farmers who are largely responsible for the major chunk of food that goes into the government system for ensuring food security—so Punjab and Haryana [states], basically.
Every year, Minimum Support Pricing (MSP) is declared for around 24 crops all over the country. But the mechanisms mostly lie in very few states, and very few crops. And Punjab and Haryana are the major states where a major chunk of buying happens at MSP.
There are two parts of food security: one when you produce the food, which is then taken up by the government, the Food Corporation of India; and the second is, it is distributed at [lower] prices through the public system, so that everybody has enough food to eat. So, when they decided that these new farm laws will take the state [to] the backstage, and bring the corporate [sector] at the front stage, there is a huge fear among the farmers that this system that has existed since [the Green Revolution] will now go away.
So that's what you mean when you say the ‘social contract’ between the state, science, and the farmers is being put at risk?
These institutions were created together [around] that time. But the Food Corporation of India has not expanded its capacity. As a result, [there are] food surpluses. The government [believes] it's unsustainable in terms of spending so much money on buying food through this system in Punjab and Haryana. Now they want to buy from other states. The state governments of Punjab and Haryana will lose a lot, and also the farmers will lose.
Given the issues that you described with the system as it stands, do you think that breaking this ‘social contract’ could be a good thing in the end?
That [prospect] is very, very much in the future. Right now, it does not look like that. In fact, it might actually endanger food security. I'm saying this because in Bihar, they let go of the system since 2006—now Bihar's agricultural market is more or less open—but nothing substantially has changed, and not much in terms of infrastructure. Many people have said [that] if you go on breaking the social contract without building other institutions or without enabling other states [to produce what Punjab and Haryana produce], you might end up in a crisis.
If somebody wants to do away with the state mechanism, state intervention is actually required. [Economist] Mariana Mazzucato has written about it—that in order to build institutions, of course private companies will come eventually, but the state has to play a role in the beginning years. These bills fall short because the role of [the] state is diminished a lot.
Final question: do you think climate change is playing a role here?
Yes, in the sense that the way in which intensive agriculture is being done in Punjab and Haryana is extremely unsustainable. It's not just civil society organisations or government agencies that are concerned about it—I had many meetings with farmers in Punjab and they are also worried about the environmental consequences of growing wheat and rice. But they are also saying that the institutional mechanisms for other crops, for diversification, do not exist: if you stop buying wheat and rice, at least make sure that you buy something else.
Because of the way in which this whole situation emerged, that the farmers were not invited to participate in planning or even envisioning these changes, [it] makes them very sceptical. [There is] a great amount of trust deficit because of the way in which these bills were brought forward. So in order to move forward, trust has to be built between different farmer organisations and the government.
📝 More on Poonam Padney’s work on Green Revolutions in Brazil, China, and India
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