 Hello, let's talk about the farmers bills that were rammed through parliament last week. On Sunday, the farmers produced trade and commerce, that is the promotion and facilitation bill, and the farmers empowerment and protection agreement on price assurance and farm services bill were passed by the Rajya Sabha with a voice vote. That means that an actual numerical vote at a division of votes was not taken. The bills were heavily opposed in the Rajya Sabha where the BJP and its allies did not have a majority. In fact, opposition members had moved resolutions calling for the bills to be referred to a select committee. But the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha did not allow for that, and the bills were passed with a voice vote. This is yet another instance of the government throwing all democratic norms to the winds, something we have been witnessing for years now. Opposition parties and farmers organizations have been opposing these bills for months now. They say it will give a free rein to private players and corporates and the farmers will suffer. We talked to Viju Krishna, the All India Kisan Sabha on this issue. First of all, Viju, could you start by telling us about how these bills were passed yesterday, the whole process itself, because we do know that there was a lot of opposition inside the house as well, but the government pushed through nonetheless. What we witnessed yesterday in parliament is the darkest, it's the most shameful incident with the deputy chairman disallowing the rights of the members of parliament. There were statutory resolutions put by different members of parliament. They had asked for sending these bills to select committees. These should have been voted upon, there should have been discussion and voting on that. Nothing of that sort was allowed, and just without a voice vote, we already saw in the beginning itself how the question hour was done away with it. And citing the lockdown, the time has been curtailed, and yesterday we found that the bills also, it was not just passed in the proper democratic manner, it is throttling of democracy that was there, and coming as it came from the deputy chairman himself. And today we find that the different members of parliament from the opposition parties, they have been suspended. If the Modi government feels that the protests against these anti-farmers bills can be suppressed in this manner, they are mistaken. Even as we are talking now, thousands of farmers are in protest in Bangalore, farmers, agriculture workers, Dalits, from different organizations uniting against this bill. It is not just in Punjab or Haryana as some sections of the media are trying to put. We have been continuously having protests, and this shameful incident in the parliament yesterday, which they are now trying to cover up by acting against the leaders of the opposition. I think their undemocratic authoritarian phase is exposed in front of the people of our country. Absolutely. And it's interesting you mentioned the media because a lot of discussion, let's take the bills one by one. The first one of course is the trade and commerce facilitation bill. And now a lot of discussion around this bill seems to have centered around the idea that this is actually going to free the farmers, it's going to give them more choices. And this is the end of a oppressive system of APMCs or agriculture produced marketing committees. It is the end of the age of middlemen and arguments like that which the media has very uncritically been repeating. So could you take us through actually what are the key objections that are being raised by farmers and farmers organizations about the bill? Actually where the ordinances were brought, the agriculture minister made this ridiculous claim that farmers did not get freedom on 15th August 1947. And it is Narendra Modi who on 3rd June 2020 has granted the freedom to farmers to sell anywhere they want. Firstly, it is a blatant lie that farmers didn't have the freedom to sell anywhere else. There was no compulsion that they sell only in the APMC. But why were the APMCs brought in firstly in student? It was to ensure that the traders who were exploiting the farmers, that could be stopped, the big traders. And there could be regulated markets in which there would be a fair playing ground and farmers interest would also be protected. That is what they are doing away with. And they are citing many things like middlemen and the farmers not benefiting from it and so on. It is actually throwing the baby with the bath water. These are things which can be resolved by internal reforms. What is required is expansion of the marketing infrastructure across the country. The central government should spend for that. Instead of that, what it is doing is it is saying that Adhanese and Ambani and other big corporate companies, also maybe Walmarts and others, will come and buy from you directly and give you a better price. Those big names which each of these bills have, I think it has to be simplified for people. One is very clearly Mandi Todo, Sarkari Kharid, MSP per Sarkari Kharid, that is total deregulation of market and in a gradual manner, facing out the MSP procurement which is there. Second is the Holding and Black Marketing Promotion Act. That is the changes in the Essential Commodities Act. Very clearly we say Jamakhori and Kalabazari Badao Kanu and the third one is the Corporate Contract Farming Act. These are the three things to put it simply and the protest against this is also arising precisely for this reason that the government is going ahead with the WTO recommendations. The dictates of the WTO repeatedly has been to cut subsidies for our public distribution system food security programs and to withdraw from public stock holding. This is exactly what the Shanta Kumar Commission recommended, the senior BJP leader recommended this and also states which are giving a bonus above the MSP. Very clearly the Shanta Kumar Commission said that from such states there should be no procurement. You are going in that direction, gradual withdrawal of the central government from all its responsibilities to ensure MSP and this is from a government which in 2014 came to power by promising farmers the Swaminathan Commission recommendation would be implemented that C2 plus 50 at least one and a half times the total cost of production would be ensured. So that is what is happening. Now they are saying we are not in a position to do it. Don't worry, Adhani and Ampani will do it for you. So farmers very well know that it's not going to happen. Absolutely. So what we might be seeing is actually say outside the APMC system, outside the MSP system corporates may come strike deals with farmers maybe initially even offer a good price for one or two years and then as they become the default buyers from farmers then what has happened with so many gig economies for instance in India that initially you create a system and then after that your farmers are at your mercy. Absolutely. You have correctly placed the point that initially there is a possibility that some of the traders would pay better. Later we have found wherever the earlier systems of contract farming, the most acclaimed contract farming model was the Kuppam model which Chandrababu Naidu came up with. A Israeli American company was into contract farming. They grew gherkins where the farmers were forced to gherkins which is not consumed by even any farmer there forget for the farmer even in India the consumption is very less except maybe the super rich who use it in their salads. Initially they were getting better prices than the other crops. Gradually it started saying that grading and such issues that the size is not correct it is shape is not correct on those counts farmers were denied the prices which was initially promised later when international market somewhere else there is an over production then that also leads to a price crash. When there is a price crash internationally that burden is transferred to the farmer but when there is a price rise there is no benefit given to the farmer that is what happens. And this I believe also in the context of the second we were talking about which you described as the contract farming one. Could you just explain a bit also how it changes what is the current situation what is the change from the current situation that exists. See Prashant actually the three bills are all interlinked one is the market being deregulated and slow gradually withdrawing on paper even today the Prime Minister says MSP and procurement will happen but why would a trader go to the APMC and pay the tax and all that and buy this MSP that is a question which he has to answer. What we are saying is then make it a legal right of the farmer that whoever buys from the farmer directly will pay the MSP as per C2 plus 15 it should be a legal right they are not doing that. See the name in one of the bill is named price guarantee not a single point about how this prices guaranteed is mentioned and you have the essential commodities act which is being changed which I said is the hoarding and so all three are interlinked and third one is the contract farm repeatedly model contract farming they have been trying to impose through the state governments there has been resistance now this is the manner in which they are trying to bring and the added point is that the rights of the state agriculture has been a state subject under the federal system and totally riding rough short over the rights of the states that is what is happening contract farming in all cases we have seen it is an unequal system in which the small farmers of our country are having no protection at all and would you could you talk a bit also about the protests that are being planned that are going on right now as you said there is a tendency in many media organizations to only talk about the recent protests in Punjab and Haryana and make it sound like it is just one section of the farmers in one part of the country who are worried where it's like you pointed out this has been an ongoing agitation in fact on news click itself you've talked about some of these agitations in the past so could you also give us a trajectory what protests are taking place and what is likely to happen in the coming days and weeks actually when the ordinances were brought immediately we came out with protests against that first in terms of press statements and memorandums and so on and then on 10th across the country these ordinances and the amendments proposed to the electricity act were burnt our experience was in more than 3500 centres across the country these ordinances were burnt we later have had that is even before this concerted protests which are going on now which media is showing us though it is only in Punjab and Haryana even before that on August 9th we had a jail barro across the country supported by the trade unions and the AKCC are also coming in support of that on 5th September we had a joint worker president Majdur Kisan day was observed where these issues have been raised farmers across the country have written email sent letters and sent emails to the prime minister the PM also mentioned how many letters have come what is the kind of response from the field that is not at all coming and even as I'm talking today there's a massive protest going on in Bangalore where the farmers organizations agriculture workers organizations as well as Dalit organizations have come together it's a massive protest which is going on these protests are continuing 25th September has all India Kisan Sundar's coordination committee has called for a resistance day Prathirot Divas which will be observed in different ways Punjab, Haryana and possibly Tamil Nadu are thinking of a band on that day others would have different ways of protest 28th we are going to again expose the pro-corporate approach and the undemocratic manner in which they are pushing through this government which if it if it is confident this is for the benefit of the farmers they could as well have discussed the ordinance had time till December they could have had wider consultations strengthen ensure that all whatever doubts or confusions are there that is clear and brought a bill unanimously two bills had been placed by farmers themselves in the parliament one is to ensure guaranteed commemorative price and another for freedom from independence it would have been good if the government had first looked into those before going into this if their interest was really to benefit the farmers actually it is at the bidding of the corporate cronies that they are bringing these bills. Thank you so much Viju for talking to us and we'll be continuously talking to you as the protest continues as well. In our next segment we talked in news clicks Prabir Pulkai is on the recent US moves against Chinese tech firms he explains the global impact of these moves especially in the trade and technology sectors. Prabir to quickly begin with what do you how do you see the latest last two days at the elephants you talked about this before of course but again this marks a very concrete step and it now looks like China after holding back for quiet some time and hoping that saner councils might prevail is likely to take action as well. Well this is really fracturing the world on a number of fault lines not one so one of it we have already been commenting on the trade come tech war that's one element of it but it also has now the prospect of fracturing the world on financial issues financial terms and we'll discuss how that's likely to happen but also in terms of the supply chains because the US and China are the biggest economies in the world they had trade relations there's an enormous amount of trade that goes on between the two and if that relationship fractures then we're going to see of course the consequences on a wide range of issues and the last is of course the internet you know which has been regarded as something which everybody accepts is common communications etc etc but if this trend starts to develop further then we are likely to see the internet fracture into a number of national networks and then we are going to see a qualitatively different future than what we have seen today so I think there is a huge number of issues over here but taking up the first issue that you raised one is of course that we chat has been banned so that's almost immediate but tiktok has given been given a reprieve of a different kind no more downloads of tiktok are possible but they have 100 million users in the united states they can still use it till November 12th without any fresh downloads which means tiktok still gets a certain kind of grace period within which then whether oracle can settle its accounts convince the united states and have either bite dance and over the tiktok app completely to them or bite dance itself or tiktok headquarters itself in the united states all of these are there in in a in a step that preceded in this chinese had already said that a lot of the software technology that tiktok holds or bite dance holds that is subject to export restrictions because that's artificial tools that they're using other software tools they're using so there are export control regulations that are there so they had made clear that transferring tiktok bite dances property will not be that easy and chinese would have a say on that even if bite dance therefore loses a considerable amount of its money because if it could sell for instance the tiktok even in the united states and four or five other countries that were being talked of all of which are headquarters of which was the us arm of tiktok then that would could conceivably would be 10 to 20 billion dollars so that's a money where bite dance would have had and a normal course probably even more could take off as you know was a really an app which was having enormous amount of spread among the youngsters teenagers so this is one part and you also talked about the other response that china has said they had prepared just like the us is preparing entities list they had an unreliable entities list in which lot of the big american companies are there so if they now say that all those unreliable entities which are there we will not buy equipment from them we'll not buy goods from them what you're going to see therefore is a cascading effect that for instance boeing of course boeing itself is in the down in the dumps at the moment but if it wasn't it would not have been able to access the chinese market because it would be considered an unreliable entity so how many of these players and china is a big buyer of american goods as well if that happens then others will benefit it could be chinese local companies of course but could also be european companies we are not in the race at the moment because we have also decided to follow the american route banning apps and so on so i don't think at the moment we'll be looked upon indian companies will be looked upon a particularly reliable entities either but given the fact that our footprint has been relatively much smaller in china it makes a difference to us but may not make such a big difference to us in the long run but definitely for the chinese and american trade it means essentially sundering breaking apart the supply chains which have bound them together and if the americans are not going to supply chips and other equipment to the chinese then there is a huge number of companies in china who buy these chips but the major chinese chip manufacturers do consider china as a big market for them so that was already happening with the huawei issue but now with this we are really starting to look at retaliation possibly from the chinese companies chinese side i think part of it they were holding off thinking if it lasts till the elections let's see what the new administration does but let's be clear that whether it's a biden administration or a trump administration these processes that have been set at large i think these processes will continue and there is going to be a large amount of bipartisan support on the issue of china at the moment so i think you are going to see a slow unraveling of the global trade system with this step and certainly a sundering of technologies and also internet so these are the new elements that are coming in and i think therefore this particular step that us has now taken may not appear by itself as the big one but this is finally the one in which chinese are now i think considering retaliation whether they will hold off till november we do not know but it does appear they're preparing the grounds for retaliation as well that's all your time for today we'll be back tomorrow with more news from the country and the world until then keep watching news click