 Welcome to Dispatches from India, a show by People's Dispatch where we bring you major news developments from India, the issues Indians are talking about and the implications these will have on politics, economy and society. We will first get into the news this week section. As we discussed in the show earlier, a horrific incident of four protesting farmers being overrun by a car on October 3 had shook the country. The main accused in the case is Ashish Mishra, the son of the Union Minister of State Ajay Mishra. He was finally arrested nearly a week after the incident. Over the past few weeks, farmers have been protesting in various parts of the country demanding justice for those who were killed. Farmers organizations which have been leading the ten-month-long protest are planning major agitations as well. Hanan Mollah, General Secretary of the Farmers Organization, the All India Kisan Sabha, talks about some of the upcoming protests and demonstrations. We have opened a branch in Andhra. The main one was going on all over the country. There were many protests. There were protests in Haryana, there were protests in Loura, there were protests in Shatipurthi, there were protests in Assam, there were protests in Khun. Here we have a demand, there is a program, on the 12th of October, it is called Bhog Kadibaas, the last month of October. So, there will be a last half of the 5th of October. We are telling the farmers to come there, we will give them their clean water. And on that same day, we will appeal to the farmers in the whole country, who will give their clean water in their place. And on the 18th of October, from 8 am to 4 am, the rail will stop. There should be some action against the central government. So, on the 18th, the rail will stop. And finally, on the 27th of October, there will be a big rally in Lucknow, Delhi. Let's go there. There will be a big punch, like when it happened in Farnagar, there were lakhs of people. Even here, there will be big people, there is a center in Lucknow, so the whole country will spread the message. So, there will be a big punch. We now go to the state of Jammu and Kashmir where authorities have dismissed 17 persons from government services on charges of working against the state. The first spate of dismissals was carried out within a month after the authorities announced the formation of a special task force in April this year to crack down on government employees suspected of being anti-national. Through a change in the law, the requirement of a hearing and inquiry prior to dismissal was done away with, in cases of national security. Idris Jaanmeer is among the three employees sacked last week by the administration. The charges against them were not specified. Also fired was Dr. Abdul Bari Naik, a teacher who was arrested in March and released only earlier this month. Here is a ground report. So it's not the security of the state which is under threat. It's basically the ideology of a given party which they feel is under threat and that's why they are resorting to these draconian orders. I hope that the government has not decided to make the constitution inoperational in Jammu and Kashmir. The people of Jammu and Kashmir do have the right to express themselves or to be heard before taking any action against any reason and for employees as well. Next, we get into our infocus section where we take a deeper look at some of the burning issues in the country today. Over the past few years, there has been a huge demand for domestic services including cleaning, maintenance and personal care. A number of companies have emerged which through apps send workers to provide these services at home. One of the biggest in India is Urban Company. However, the company employs these workers a large number of whom are women as partners on a contract basis. This means that they have no standard wage, service allowance or fixed working hours. The issues faced by these workers were amplified during the pandemic. On October 8, hundreds of women protested outside of the company's head office in Haryana, voicing their demands. The company responded with a 12-point program which promised to improve partner earnings and livelihood but the workers feel that many of their concerns have not been addressed. Here is a ground report on the issues faced by the workers. Before COVID-19, Urban Company came to power. After coming to Urban Company, they had to face a lot of credit issues and pressure from us that if you work so hard in a day you will be able to lead so much and they have targeted 50 people in a month. After targeting 50 people, they said that if you don't work for 50 people, you will get a penalty of Rs. 2,000. Now, what will the girls do? It is time for COVID-19 to look at the families and see how much the girls will run away from COVID-19. How can they run away? So, you have this new metrical response rate and then there are penalizations on that or there are pressures put on women. You know, the moment you have a metric, it becomes a way for the company to tell women that they're not as good as the average amount of the fleet or partners. They don't actually have the freedom then to choose the work they want to do with the flexibility that they want. And you have to realize that every time there is a relationship of power, there is some kind of imposition that happens, you know. Like, there is no free will here. So, the rating system, the opaque kind of like systems that drive these penalties that people are not aware of. Some of these penalties are just absolutely horrible, I would say. There's no way to justify them. I would like to see the company try to justify them. Indians have been suffering from massive fuel price hikes over the past year and more. Average prices across the four metropolitan cities have increased by 26% for petrol and 31% for diesel in the past one year. This has had a cascading effect as every sector of life has been affected. A major reason for these high prices is the continuous hikes in excise taxes by the government. Among the worst hit by these hikes are the poor, both in urban and rural areas. Journalist Anandya Chakrabarty explains how they are affected. Fuel price hikes hurt the poor the most. Not only because petrol and diesel have an impact on prices across the board, but also because they affect directly what the poor use. And I'm going to take only two examples for you. I'm going to take a lower middle class employee or someone who's self-employed, in a city or a town who earns about 15,000 rupees a month. You know that you come across such people all the time. And I'm also going to take a small farmer who has about two acres of agricultural land. So how does it affect them? Let's just look at it. I'm going to start with the person who is the urban worker, urban employee who earns about 15,000 rupees. They have a bike, because they live on the outskirts of the city. They have to travel to work. A bike is cheaper because public transport is very bad in our cities and public transport is expensive. So they use bikes. So I'm going to take mileage of 30 kilometers per hour, 35, 40 and 45. And I'm going to look at the petrol prices about two years ago when it was approximately about 75 rupees. And I'm going to take petrol prices, which is hovering around 105 rupees depending on which city you're in. And then I'm going to calculate the change. So at 30 kilometers per liter where the fuel bill is the maximum, it used to be 2600 earlier two years ago. Now it's 3640. Why? Because I'm taking 26 working days here. The change is a little more than 1000 rupees is being spent just on commute. If it's 35 kilometers per liter, you have the numbers on your screen. It's about 890 rupees extra. 40 kilometers per liter mileage. The difference that comes is about 780 rupees per month for 26 days. And at 45 kilometers per liter where the petrol bill is the lowest. It used to be about 1730 odd. It's gone up to about 2400. The difference is close to 700 rupees. Now you'll say that is not much, but remember this person earns just 15,000 rupees. And also remember it's most likely that the salaries have not increased because of COVID and the slowdown. Chances are they were sacked at the peak of the COVID wave, have got another job back probably at a lower salary. So in any case just a single increase, the increase in petrol prices has increased their costs relative to their salary by 5 to 7%. That's a huge increase. Okay, let me look at farmers. And here I'm looking at farmers who own up to 2 acres of land. And what are the expenses? Where do they use fuel? They use diesel to power their water pumps and they use diesel for tractors, harvesters, threshers and stuff like that. The government's own committee calculations show that for paddy for an entire season per acre about 103 liters of diesel are used. Okay, I'm taking various sources. I'm taking an average here, 103 liters of diesel per acre per season for paddy. For wheat, it's lower because wheat requires less irrigation, less water. It's 83 liters per acre of diesel. That's the cost per season for a 2 acre, for 1 acre of land. So we have to now multiply that by 2. So what am I going to do? I'm going to look at the average yield and multiply that per acre and multiply that by 2 to say what is the likely output? How much extra minimum support price have these farmers got in these 2 years? The difference is 125 rupees per quintal for paddy and 175 rupees per quintal for wheat. So you understand that if a farmer owns 2 acres of land or any, for instance, per quintal of paddy, they're actually earning 54 rupees less compared to the MSP that has gone up. 54 rupees less compared to 2 years ago, just because of diesel prices. Forget about rising fertilizer prices. Forget about other prices that have gone up. Seeds, etc. Just diesel prices means they're losing out by about 54 rupees on diesel alone on paddy. On wheat, they are just gaining about 9 rupees. That is it. That is the gain. And that's little gain that they're getting because of the MSP hike is being lost because of the hike in prices of other things which itself is caused by fuel price hike because fuel prices affect freight, they affect everything and cause an overall inflation. That is why the poor are the most likely to be the worst hit by fuel price hikes. Don't believe the propaganda that they are not affected by this. That's all there is for this week. Next week we'll be back with more news from India. To know more about these and other such stories, keep watching People's Dispatch.