 Hello and let's talk about the minimum support price for the MSP. So the MSP has been very much in the news over the past few days as the farmers have made it one of their key demands. Now the important thing to note here is what the farmers mean by the MSP and what the government means are two very different things. The farmers of course seeking a much more higher MSP based on very scientific calculations whereas the government has been talking about just keeping the status quo. Now it's important to remember that many farmers across India do not get MSP and this in fact has been used by some of the supporters of the government to say that it's not really that big a deal and therefore the reforms are okay. However what we do know is that the MSP has a lot of benefits both direct and indirect for both farmers who get it and those who do not get it and the larger ecosystem as well and all this could be destroyed if corporates are allowed to have a bigger say in agriculture. We talked to senior journalist Orindya Chakravarty on some of these issues. Thank you so much Orindya for joining us. The farmers protest has entered its third week and the government has been negotiating or claims it has been negotiating of course but offering in fact very little concrete steps considering what the farmers have been asking us. Ranand Mullah was pointing out they have been saying amendment, amendment, amendment. We have been saying repeal, repeal, repeal. But one key aspect like we talked about last week remains the MSP. It's one of the central issues and farmers leaders have pointed out the other day we were talking to Vijay Krishnan recently we were talking to Sainath both of them pointing out that the MSP is of course part of the issue but the larger demand is that they want a complete withdrawal of the laws because just a guarantee of the MSP alone does not necessarily work. But in this context I also wanted to maybe talk to you a bit about how the MSP actually does work because there has been of course a lot of say questions around the MSP people saying of course that you know this is maybe not that modern in the system we should go for a more privatized system where there's choice you know this sort of regulated system is not really the way ahead. So maybe at the level of maybe an explainer at a very basic level why is the MSP so central? So you know one of the arguments that is constantly made Prashant is that the MSP I think the Shanta Kumar committee, the BJP's Shanta Kumar had done a report for the FCI which came out and he calculated that about 6% of paddy and wheat farmers in India end up getting MSP and even there only 25% or a quarter of their produce is actually picked up at MSP which is what the government announces as a support price. Harish Damodaran recently in Indian Express calculated and showed that that is not correct it's an underestimate. So he suggested that maybe about 15 to 20% of agricultural producers do get MSP, do get advantage of MSP in some sort of the other and then there are other products like milk and cotton etc cotton which is picked up at MSP and milk where there is a some sort of a guaranteed minimum threshold that farmers cooperative farmers get and even the cooperatives of cooperatives that is a de facto government supported system that we see Amul, Mother Dairy and stuff like that. So Harish Damodaran argues that about 25% of people who work within the larger process of cultivation and poultry and dairy farming get MSP. So the government's argument has been that well you know even if that's the case then 75% don't get it. So what's the big problem if we remove MSP? Only the cream the rich farmers have been getting MSP and they are the people who are worried about it. They are the people who have vested interests and that is why they want this MSP system because they corner all the subsidies that the government gives to the agricultural sector and they don't want that to go away. If these laws are changed then you know what will happen is that corporate sector will enter, people will compete, there will be no monopoly. Right now there's a Mandi monopoly, there would be no monopoly and they would fight and the farmer would sit at his you know in his farm on his perch, smoking his beady, lying back and maybe because of the entire privatization system obviously he would no longer need beady, he'll be smoking high quality cigarettes because you know they lack so much money but of course this is not a I don't smoke let me tell you. We don't endorse it officially. And I cannot vouch for the bearded gentleman you're seeing on the screen right now but let me tell you that the point here remains that the picture that is painted is of course that these buyers will come and say buy from me I'll buy, I'll buy, please sell it to me here take as much as you want. Now we know that this is all a fairy tale, it's a ridiculous fairy tale which is not taking place anywhere in the world when you remove the standard systems of procurement and allow big corporates to come in what happens is what is called a monopsony, a single buyer takes over. We know that is what perhaps everyone's waiting for in the first place and this entire fairy tale is even more a fairy tale Prashant because agriculture is not like factory production, it's as simple as that. So if you let's say you run a factory which makes I don't know maybe table lamps and then you get to know that another factory has opened up of table lamps and you say that okay now this is a problem so I'll have to push down my prices because suddenly there's a supply going to increase. So let's not produce as many as we produced last season, let's reduce the supply so that we can hold our prices and retain the same revenue even with the same amount of supply, a lower amount of supply and a farmer can't do that. A farmer's response is always to the previous season even if the government says you know big corporates will come in they'll have these AI and computer linkages across the world they will know which part of Burkina Faso is short of maize and they'll tell the farmer in Sasaram to grow maize and sell it. These are all pipe dreams first of all however the bigger point is the farmer will still have to commit to something at the beginning of the season at the beginning of the sowing season right and then you wait for weeks for the crop to grow and when by the time you grow it's only then that you realize whether there's a shortage or a glut it's only then you realize what the demand is for products. This is very different from manufacturing where if you produce table lamps you can sell them next year just hire a go down and keep it there farmers do not have access to that so given that this entire thing of market forces demand and supply matching is poppycock right it is absolute these are white lies I don't think anyone believes them those who say all this are essentially apologists for big corporates let us be very clear about them they're liars I'm sorry to make these big statements because they know it's not true it's not true anywhere in the world it doesn't happen right now the point is that secondly the entire process of once the farmer is committed and we know what happens the only crops where despite a shortage of production or a glut of production farmers can still get some sort of stable prices our wheat and rice which the government procures right so therefore any other crop even all seeds and cotton even cotton we know that even in cotton what happens is that the government doesn't procure enough farmers are left with huge amounts of produce and they of the crop and they sit around they just say and do distrussage there was a time before the you know boom years what would happen is these Chinese traders would be all over Gujarat picking a buying cotton and you would say wow privatization has completely given up the need for government to procure but as soon as that boom was over when that 2008 collapse happened that is all gone it happens in some years when the demand pushes up and there's a shortfall in some other part of the world and Chinese traders come and buy it but otherwise that demand it has been shrinking and unless the government buys these products no one else is going to when there is a glut where there's overproduction we know what that does to vegetables exactly right and the funny thing is that when that happens and we say oh my god look at these middlemen they're making all the money and that is why APMC and MSP all this should be stopped we talk about all this when they we talk about onions and tomatoes as if the government has been procuring onions and tomatoes exactly as if it has been announcing MSP for onions and tomatoes right right right absolutely so we see images of tomato being thrown on the roads we see news clippings because a pharma organizations are pretty smart they also call up news agencies and say we're able to throw tomatoes please send a camera crew and they protest in that fashion exactly so it's only MSP which protects them absolutely now as I think we've discussed this in the past as well Prashant and I'm going to just quickly go through that as well and you know when I say quickly it's usually then okay let's say the 75 percent of farmers do not get MSP right cotton and paddy farmers do not get it sorry all all farmers we know that about 35 50 percent of the produce 40 to 50 percent of the produce is picked up but a large part of that produce might be you know owned by or being sold by large farmers not necessarily representative numbers there but let's say that 75 percent don't get it they still protect it by the MSP and this is where it is a crucial thing to understand and you know I have a friend who comes from Madhya Pradesh from Madhya Pradesh and his family is an Arthya family they're big traders and one of the reasons so I asked him that how does the system work why what is your problem with MSP so he said that we don't have any fields but the point is MSP is our insurance because we pay close to MSP to even the small farmer so if we are let's say getting 1000 rupees we'll end up paying 850 our margin is 150 which then includes cost of storage transport the financing because we will be holding till the government procures right a lot of times we know that things being produced in Bihar are being bought by traders and taken to Punjab Haryana where the Mandis have a decent procurement system absolutely right that is where it is picked up so the fact that the government ensures a minimum support right is that even if prices fall even Arthyas can pay a steady exploitative but steady amount to small farmers this is something that is not I'm sure everyone knows but it's not talked about because the Arthyas are exploitative but as in all pre-capitalist exploitative relationships there is a community tie right they're not confronting each other as independent impersonal entities right and those community ties have to be reproduced over the time if you let a farmer die then the chances are that that you will die in the end right because your entire catchment area will go so as it would be wrong to call it feudal therefore I'm calling it non-capitalist relations all right there are those community ties which ensure and endure which is why often farmers commit suicide when banks or microfinance entities come to take back their money it's not always that it's a local Mahajan who's asking for the money right it's often it's an institutional framework which comes an impersonal institutional framework which comes to take the money back and because they've not been able to access MSP because if they could access MSP if they could access procurement they would not be in this trouble absolutely right and this context is it's interesting that like you talked about these relations and community and while we do accept that there is of course definitely exploitation the solution to this exploitation of course would have been for the state to strongly intervene create community networks you know bring farmers together and break whatever exploitative relations are there in that way as opposed to actually abandoning the entire sector to another fresh player which is actually even far more powerful than your local exploitative money lender look at the insidious manner in which it is being done because the point is not that they're just saying that okay we want to end this exploitative relationship we want to break the back of the aratias and the middlemen we want to ensure farmers get full price but MSP doesn't work we think private sector will pay more right let's assume that is their belief because many people don't the people don't there's a large number the majority of those who do economic analysis or economic policy are essentially neoliberal influenced people so they believe in the market it's not as if they're you know chores right some of them are I'm not saying neither of them are not but some of them are but still they believe it so let's say they believe that farmers will get but then tell me one thing why does the government put in those two new laws for contracts which says that the contract will be on predetermined produce and I think quality right standards and also that both parties can dissolve this contract anytime they want right right and the other side other part is that any dispute you can't go to a civil court you can only go to the SDM's tribunal this is essentially allowing the executive to decide there's more in this there is no leeway for the states to do anything because in both the laws it says that the center can direct states to do and follow these laws right implement them center is the right so essentially the federal rights are completely being taken away why are these laws there that you cannot go to court why is there a law which makes it so easy to create contracts for the buyer and you know a farmer are they is this an equal relationship does the government of India really want us to believe that there's an equal relationship between a big corporate with its army or big lawyers and a small farmer and it's a joke if they want so if they were serious about it they would have strengthened the legal protection for farms they would have said there'll be a fine for big corporates if they violate corporate norms right a big corporate will have to pay everything in advance contracts can be changed by farmers but might make it much more difficult for the buyer to change it no all of these have been tweaked to exploit farmers more bring them within exploitative capitalist relationships now again i'm not saying that the pre-capitals of the non-capitalist relationships are not exploitative we'd know they are no one's batting for artyas here but the point is that the artya system has actually been sustained by the state itself the state in short because we know that when there was a shortage right after independence Nehru had supposedly said that one of we should hang these you know trade merchants from the nearest lamp or something there's this apocryphal story which supposedly is true and then this entire system was brought that all produce these to pass through these government regulated markets once so that the government knows how much is being produced and also so that it can ensure that farmers get they can track what farmers are being paid right so that though the level of exploitation can reduce and the government understood that you cannot suddenly overnight change these relationships so the state has to support it with money with its institutional structure to reduce the exploitation right now you're essentially opening it up to increase the exploitation not reduce it absolutely and finally in this context just a quick reflection also on the state of the narrative state of the discourse so to speak around this whole issue what we're basically seeing also is the fact that a series of values and ideas starting from the mid 80s the early 90s that have because so seeped in into our lives into our culture that in the absence of without really looking at some of the realities you were talking about some of the details you're talking about words like choice and freedom and their flexibility all these are so become such a religion for many both in the middle class of course but also the media which is why they keep getting repeated and which helps us create this whole narrative of the government being willing to compromise the government being the almost helpless party in this scenario where they just somehow trying to negotiate with the farmers so that way we're actually quite sad times considering if hundreds and thousands of people being on the borders is not enough to really shake to wake you up and make you see reality then we're really in sad times absolutely Prashant the point is that very clear that the media and again there are both kinds of people here those who have been trained and you know for 35 years you've been trained so even a 45 year old person and it was 10 at that time would have no idea someone who was 15 is 50 today on the the senior most level in news organizations probably most of them are not there at that level so if you're training for 35 years has been this that this is good right there are then it's automatically true that you will say well you know yes there are problems but those problems can be solved but farmers these are rich farmers right they get subsidies we need to stop all this right and why are poor farmers not raising not protesting as if if poor farmers protested in their village you will send a camera crew to cover it exactly as if you've been covering poor farmers every day to know what they do and whether they protest and also when they protest what happens you call them naxalite khalistani anti-national you say these are pakistani and chinese backed choreographed movement so who's going to protest first of all as a poor farmer has time to get away from the act of just about earning a living every single day right and come to you come and protest so these are all a combination of a mindset and deliberate choice i don't think it is just mine it is these people who say there is full there capitalism and the market allows full choice sitting in these so-called private networks which are supposedly emerged out of capitalism and the market they have no choice they cannot sit in the studios and say this is wrong because they do not have the choice to do that if they say it they will not be in the studio the next day and they know it they know they have no choice they know that they are not being allowed to speak on social media their organizations are telling them that you can't so they are very well aware what capital and market does to democracy and choice but they are not going to uh so they know all these things they know these things many people and the sad part is that despite this knowledge they don't question what they've been taught that's the problem absolutely thank you so much for talking to us thanks a lot that's all we have time for today we'll be back on Monday with more news from india and the world until then keep watching news click