Learning from India's 250 million protestors

As I have been digging into food supply chains for Point of Origin, I cannot help but have my attention diverted by the harrowing New Delhi protests of Indian Farmer Unions against the ruling Modi government, which started on November 26 and are continuing to this day. While India may seem to be a world away from our lives in the US and the UK the truth is that these protests are more important to us than you might think. As a historian with a deep seated interest in American agricultural history, I cannot help but see a strong connection between the struggle taking place in India and our own agricultural history. These protests in India strike a similar chord to the 1977 American Agricultural movement, fueled by protestors who like those in India today –sought better prices for their harvest, and who also began protesting in response to the passage of a series of laws known as the 1977 farm bills. Protests over farmers earning fair prices are not a new phenomenon; they have occurred throughout history all over the world. New Delhi’s protests are just the latest in farmer uprisings about the inequities built into our global food systems. So how did India get here? What is fueling the largest protest in modern history? What lessons can we take away from comparing our own history of agricultural protests to the current protests in India?

The current protests in Delhi are in response to the passing of a set of laws that are known as the India Farms reforms of 2020, the most contentious of these acts is the “The Farmers’’ Produce Trade And Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Bill 2020”. This act de-regulates the –up until now – highly regulated agricultural sector. Prior to this act, all agricultural transactions between farmers and large retailers took place at government-run auction houses. This guaranteed that crops were not sold below the Government mandated MSP (Minimum Support Price) for produce. This price, according to The Indian Express, is calculated at 1.5 times the cost of production for a crop. The government enforced the MSP in two ways: a) through guaranteeing they will buy any crops at the MSP price from farmers and b) by regulating and owning the auction houses where crops were sold. The new act deregulates where farmers can sell their produce, allowing for both virtual and physical crop market places to be entirely privately run and owned. 

Farmers argue that by deregulating auction houses and allowing for transactions anywhere it is more likely they will be taken advantage of by food resellers. Without government run auction houses to control the prices, farmers will no longer have a guaranteed income, destabilizing an already precarious livelihood. In an interview, one farmer said “These bills will make farmers commit suicide”, acknowledging a devastating issue already rampant in India’s farming community. Between 2000-2011, 3,057 Indian farmers have lost their lives to suicide.

While critics of the MSP -  for example the Candian government - have expressed concerns about the program being “anti-free market” and “anti-competition”, it is hard to ignore the important growth of smallholder farms while the program has been in place. Since the MSP was introduced in the late 1960s, the average privately owned farm size has decreased by nearly a quarter - a much more equitable distribution of land. In the last three decades, 30 million small scale farms were created through this shift away from large farms. These land redistribution patterns have translated into more people than ever in rural India having direct control over their source of income. No policy is perfect, and MSP is not immune to calls for improvements. But, shouldn’t these increases in equity and economic opportunity make-up for shortcomings in the MSP system? Surely enough so that dismantling it overnight, without the input or approval of farming unions, is not warranted. The actions the government has taken against the 60 year old MSP program could set a dangerous precedent for farm law and regulation in India.

Given the government’s avoidance of guaranteeing the MSP system stays in place, the protesters have plenty to worry about. There is a clear erosion of workforce protection that took place behind closed doors without the proper consultation of the people it affected. While farmers are rising up against this act, the Indian government has met their peaceful right to protest with rubber bullets, tear gas and brutal police violence.

We, as a global community, have a lot to learn from the protestors in India. Here in the US, we are no strangers to conflict between the government and farmers. Through my lens as a historian, my thoughts are drawn back again to the 1977 American agricultural movement. Like the protestors in India, farmers across the US organized in response to a lack of price security that put their livelihoods on a balancing beam. While nowhere near the size of the protests in India, the American Agricultural movement still culminated in a significant showing of a 900 tractor motorcade from Reno, Nevada to Washington D.C with protestors wielding signs and buttons asking for greater parity between the cost of production and profit for farm goods. The 1977 movement did not result in any action from the government or stabilized prices, but its historical similarities to this month’s protests in India shows us that the problem of farmers not getting paid fairly for their work is a global problem - not just one localised to India. The current movement in India is more than what we are witnessing today, it symbolizes an opportunity for growers across the world.