 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us the well-known journalist who's been covering farmers, marches, struggles for a very long time and of course rural India's issues, he signed up with us. Sign up, you've been watching this scenario for a very long time. This is something which has been your passion. Tell me what is the new set of measures the government is introducing, including the APMC Evolution Bill? What does it mean for the farmers and why is the government doing this? I think the government is pretty much bringing in a set of measures that continues or takes forward and much further the process began in 1991. Now very briefly just these three measures. One, you have this APMC Act which posits the APMC as the center of the evil empire enslaving farmers and holding them in subjugation from which they need to be liberated and of course liberated by the corporations so this is one act. The second is that in the sphere of contracts you have a bill that's all about written contracts without mandating written agreements. Now I'm not saying that a written agreement is going to make it much better. The point is where in this new system, where in these ideas of the contract is the farmers interest made supreme? There is absolutely nothing restricting a farmer anyway from getting into a contract with Monsanto's front company or with PepsiCo or anyone. There's nothing to stop that farmer from doing that. It's a free country as many have said on this issue but what is it? The farmer enters these contracts on a weaker position from a weaker position from a no bargaining power position and is up against some of the mightiest companies in the world. You've seen in the last year or so when PepsiCo sued a bunch of Gujarat farmers for one crore on claiming a violation of its intellectual property rights, a public back class and farmer resistance beat them back but it's not always going to happen. You're looking at a situation then the other thing is the new contractors, the tough new contractors, the large giants, they don't give a damn about violating the contract because they know there is precious little the farmer can do about it. In any case, this system, the new act, it forecloses the option of the farmers to seek, you know, in the civic courts to seek some kind of regress. There is a bar on jurisdiction of the civic courts as far as I understand what there is in that thing and even if you manage to get a legal process, where are, say, I am the corporation and you are the farmer. I say, Praveer, I'm going to give you 28,000 rupees per quintal for your produce and this is the contract and halfway through, I say, sorry, world prices have dropped, you're going to get 3500, take it or leave it. There is virtually nothing you can actually do about it. There is nothing that forces them to pay up. In the act, there are things about fines on them, you know, which mean nothing to them. There are trivial things that they will just discard. The third one is about the new or amended essential commodities act and this new essential commodities act essentially tells you that all these commodities are no longer essential except under extraordinary circumstances pitched at a level by the government so high that they are unlikely to ever be met. So you really have a lot of action, further gutting farmers access on the issues of MSP on stability and price. Here's a very simple thing. What are the farmers demanding everywhere in the country? They are demanding an assured price. They are demanding stability. That is, and which of these acts offers them either of that. It offers them volatile fluctuation. It offers them depression of prices. Okay, but let's probably take this APMC thing. It's actually at one level quite entertaining how many people are falling for a most stupid and discredited principle which is essentially free market as freedom and state support as slavery. The state giving supports to corporations that's incentives. Yeah, state giving for tax breaks. Yeah, those incentives. Tax breaks, outright grants, please. In 2013, the UPA government started a thing called the Million Farmer Project. Remember, in which corporations were brought in specific corporations, you can, I'll name them for you, 3,500 crores outright grant, another 4,000 crores allocated under various debt for it. These corporations were to take up so many thousand farmers each and train the farmers, poor guys, ignorant ones into how to conduct agriculture. So, ITC, ITC Calcutta was going to teach farmers in Tamil Nadu how to grow better ragi. They weren't to teach them how to grow ragi, which of course the poor farmers of Tamil Nadu have little experience of just 2,000 years or so. And so you had ITC farmers, Ambani farmers, Tata farmers, you name it. Nothing, every single paisa went down the drain. The idea that private capital was going to come in with this incentive and start doing things to help farmers do better, that was nonsense. But come back to this point, APC has evil and fire. The deadly monopoly, the APMCs came into being as an attempt to break that very monopoly of sahukars, commission agents, traders and other parasites as well. Originally, it was really the big traders who corner food stocks when the farm produce hit the market and then depressed the prices and then of course later on hoard them and sell at high prices. This was the post-independence phenomena at which I think Nehru has once said, I want to hang the black marketers from the lampposts. That was the mahal, the environment within which this act really came about. And what they are doing is really going back, it seems to the fact that the traders will now dictate to the farmers what they could not have, they have not been so successful in doing because of MSP, because of government procurement and of course because of regulation. And if you look at that they're actually claiming, they are actually claiming that we are doing this with the view to increasing the income of the farmer. Now farmers were never under any restrictions under the Essential Commodities Act. They were never under any restrictions from stockpiling their own produce. The restrictions were precisely for those big traders, those money lenders, those hoarders and black marketers, agribusiness, corporations, that's who the restrictions were formed. Now they are completely lifted and will only be brought in under extraordinary circumstances. It now means that the big, big players, the corporations, the agribusiness can stockpile without limit, which allows them to manipulate prices downward in the case of the farmer, upward when it goes to the market. Any peasant in the world in any country will tell you one axiom of farming. When the produce is in the hands of the farmer, price falls. When the produce shifts to the hands of the trader or intermediary, the price goes up. The difference now Praveen, the mall in which that act came, there were thousands of traders across the country who were subjecting the peasantry to this kind of torment. The aim now is to simplify that and reduce it, the control to that of half a dozen companies and corporations. Now how are these corporations going to function if they're able to? Because I'm not so sure that the government's intent will succeed immediately to create chaos in my opinion. But what the companies will do when they move into the field is if there were 10 of those old intermediaries, they will incorporate, integrate, recruit three out of those 10. Because there are going to be other intermediaries above the handling them, they don't need 10 guys, they will take three and integrate them into that. The new intermediaries Praveen are going to be wearing Armani and Gucci. That's another significant difference. If you look at what you're saying, what it means is for instance, we have now Armani Enter retail in a very big way. They will procure directly from the farmers using the intermediaries Armani, Gucci or anything else. Otherwise, and that will be the ones then who will also enter into contract farming. So what you're really trying to do in this is to hand over farmers to the big capital that now sees in agriculture a stake and also sees in retail estate, which Indian big capital earlier did not. So it's actually going to cut away from both the share they now hold and effectively both at the level of the farmers and at the level of the traders what you said that that is going to thin out in terms of the traders will thin out and effectively you will get then Armani and others also entering this particular sector along with what PepsiCo and others have done earlier through contract farming as you talked about Gujarat and Punjab. The same as they are doing in every other sector with one major difference and it's the same what they've done in health, in education, in banking, trying to create those super banks. Why do you have so many of these small banks, things like now they're trying to kill the Bank of Maharashtra, a profit making bank that has been repeatedly looted by the likes of Vijay Malia and Co. But there is one big difference between what's happening in agriculture and in those sectors. In agriculture you're not breaking down some great evil public sector. Agriculture is the biggest private sector in the country. You're breaking that down despite your commitment to private enterprise, entrepreneurs, everything. You're breaking that down, breaking down India's biggest private sector to favor monopoly corporate sector. That's the crucial issue here, that's the crucial issue here which is something which is being sort of obfuscated by talking about freeing the farmers. Yes, you're freeing the farmers in order to hand them over to reliances of the country. But Praveen, I'm saying even the freeing of the farmers, I find this very funny because the bulk of agricultural marketable surplus never was transacted through the APMC. To this day, the bulk of marketable surplus, the farmers across the country, part with it at the farm gate, Praveen, the farmers of Kalahandi have pledged their crop of 2023 to some Sabukar. They've pledged the crop of two, three seasons from now because they've got to eat now. The question of an APMC doesn't arise for them. I desperately wish it did but it doesn't arise for them. You see, who are they enslaved by? Not the APMC which does not cater to enough farmers. Now the Prime Minister says, and this is a very important suggestion I have to make for Mr Mohan. He has repeatedly made two claims. He has been very angry about his integrity being questioned on this. I come to the chronology of this government's adherence to MSP, minimum support price and farmer income later but Mr Modi has repeatedly made two claims and I would offer him a way out that will make him a hero. He has repeatedly made two claims. One, MSP is here to stay. There will be no doing away with it and twice, I will double farmers incomes by 2020. I wish I had a hundred bucks for each time we have said this. If this is the case, if Mr Modi is standing personal guarantee for that MSP and the doubling of the farmers income, all he has to do is to introduce a five-paragraph bill in parliament which will be supported by every single member of parliament. He would have to silence criticism in parliament anymore because there would be very little criticism. If he put up a bill saying, why not introduce a bill guaranteeing these two things? Let there be a bill saying MSP as understood by the Swaminathan formula which the BJP promoted and pointed to and campaigned on and promised in 2014, MSP as per the Swaminathan formula stands guaranteed and no transactions in Indian agriculture can take place below the MSP price and MSP will be extended to other essential vital products. And secondly, announce a cancellation of farmer debt and farm laborer debt because there is no way you will double the incomes of those who are drowning in debt. So you do these two things, five paragraphs you put down and put in. All those MPs will come back and all those MPs, all those political parties and those farmers will be on the streets to celebrate your action. You ran through those three bills with such ruthlessness and hardship, this would pass like a breeze. You know, Sainath, as you know during emergency was the Congress, Mrs. Gandhi's regime's guest and I had at that point of time close contact with a lot of the later leaders of the Jamsang and now BJP. And their ideology from the beginning was clear. We are here to help Indian capitalists. We are not here for essentially helping the state build an Indian economy. We believe the Indian capitalist will build that economy. The state's task is to help the Indian economy and effectively by helping the capitalist, effectively to see the policies each one of them hidden behind all of the rhetoric is the fact that some capitalist or some capitalist is going to benefit out of the measures that are being taken. You raised the issue of MSP. MSP, the farmers demand has been something else. They wanted, as you said, Swaminathan committee's report as a base, but MSP procurement has gone down significantly. Precisely. And that is the whole point. Let me give you a concrete example of how that has been managed by, by the way, first by the Congress government and later by the BJP. That five paragraph law that I am suggesting would increase, would include a guarantee on procurement. It would because say what has happened in the crisis in Maharashtra for instance. I've seen that for 15 years with Mr. Vilasrao Desmukh and others, what they did very often Praveel was to announce a high MSP. Then you open the centers late into the season and that farmer is so desperate. He sells it or she sells it to the first person they meet because they need to eat. So they sell in desperation because the procurement centers are opening 20, 20 days late or more. Then they open half the number of centers required. If you need 350 in a region or in a state or whatever, you open 200 or 180 or something. And then you close the procurement, the centers 15, 20 days before the season is over, leading late arrivals coming to the market are therefore channeled away towards private trader. But okay, so this is exactly the game they've played with procurement in state after state, state after state, except in some states where there is a system that has worked to some extent like Punjab, Triana and Western UP. But there's yet other stuff to be considered in this. Praveel, when we had an earlier discussion very early during the pandemic, I had pleaded on March 25th, 26th, I had pleaded that this season every farmer should go grow food crop because of the crisis that is coming. Believe me, it's coming. It's going to be very big. On the one hand, you have, I don't want to disconnect these three acts from the rest of the circus in agriculture and from the larger social developments. You have 100 billion tons of food grain lying there in your buffer stock, which you are not distributing except at the rate of a fiddly five kilograms per person, for a working person, a labouring person, how much time would it take for that to disappear is one question. The second is that if you have that 100, the only major announcement, the cabinet and such a thing, I believe still exists in a cabinet, the only thing it said on April, that was April 19th or 20th relating to the food stocks was that the cabinet of Mr. Narendra Modi granted, passed a motion agreeing, allowing large rice stocks, no cap nution, to be converted into ethanol to make hand sanitizer. That was the only thing they did. Now, what's going to happen, of course, a lot of it will go into, a lot of it was also meant to help the 128 grain distillates in this. And of course, petrol and fuel as well, hybrid fuel. However, what do you think is now going to happen to that grain? You've got 100 million tons up there, you've got no way of storing it. Remember, we've been here before Praveen, 2002 Mr. Vajpayee's government, Mr. Shanta Kumar all of these people there, we had a huge protest as India exported grain at prices lower than that in which it was willing to give its own poor people. Now, what quality of grain could they export? The best. No, actually not. No, because they were, I'm saying they were a lot of that poorer quality grain meant for poor people was exported as cattle feed, cattle feed. It was exported as cattle feed. That was when Zawandia Saab and I were saying that the cattle of Europe and USA are the most food secure creatures on the planet. At what price? At the cattle there, we're getting subsidies at the rate of $3 a day in some of those countries. That's when Zawandia Saab said, the dream of the Indian farmer is to be born a European cow. That is, we are there again. You're going to see export of grain again. On the other hand, what I want now, there's been a global fall in income and consumption. The ILO tells you that workers have suffered something like a 60% fall in income during the pandemic. You know that that is much higher for Asia, Africa, Latin America, and you know that's going to be worse for the rural areas. Now you have brought out, thanks to decades of World Bank, IMF and our own neoliberal thinking, you have piled up huge stockpiles of cash crops. Who will buy? Maharashtra alone has 30 lakh quintals of unsold cotton. I don't know how many lakh quintals of sugarcane who is going to buy, and then you repeated these crops in the Kharif. So you're going to end up with gigantic stock, if you visit Vidarbha today, if you visit Vidarbha today and visit a farmer's house, you're going to see rooms, not just in his little go down, but inside his or her house, rooms which are packed with cotton from floor to roof. Now tell me, he's free to sell anywhere. That farmer is free to sell the cotton anywhere, who's going to buy? This is one question. The second question is, oh by the way, last year you exported cotton quite a bit and more than 50% of your exports of cotton per year went to China. Good luck with that this year and oh the Chinese will buy believe me. I guess at about one tenth or one eighth of the price they'll buy from anyone, but what is your situation now to get a price for that? This idea that you're liberating this farmer from the APMC and he can sell anywhere is exactly the idea of liberating the farmer and peasant and farm laborer from the drudgery of agriculture, which saw millions of them in the last two decades, drop out of agriculture and come here to become your migrant laborers, whom we only noticed as a society when they up and marched away from March 25th onwards. There also we liberated the peasant to throw him to the slavery of the factory and the middle classes without any rights and now you are further curbing those rights. Everyone's looking at the three farm bills. There are also a number of labor bills in the channel. Correct, terminology would be anti-labor bills and the idea that farmer is free to sell anywhere, oh yeah I can just see that farmer in Kanyakumari leaping onto his bullock cart and dashing off into the sunset to Madhya Pradesh because he said there's a better price there. Give me a break, you know who's going to pick up that from him and say and you know what is his bargaining power between those forces that are going to pick it up from him. So yeah, there will be an APMC, there will be an MSP and it will be meaningless because there will be no procurement but I'm asking what about the idea of the Prime Minister passing one five five paragraph bill with the support of the entire farming community and every political party in Parliament. I think that's a very important position for points that you're raising and it's time that all of us not only do an oppositional platform which a lot of the groups, movements, parties are doing but also say well if you mean what you say then why don't you do this. So I got last question to you on this and then we wrap up today is what about the states? This is also taking away a lot of the state's powers as well as revenue and this is a serious encroachment of the federal structure of the country as well. I am begging state governments please, please notice how one after the other your powers, your discretion, your purview, your turf is being disturbed. You people were you know wrong very very wrong in the first place in accepting the GSB which did away with the one major source of revenue that state governments had. The second thing is now with the agriculture bills, it's a state subject but please forget and here I just have to link it to other sectors and show it as a larger process of capitalism than just three bills. The, you're just taking away of power from the states. It has been going on since 1991 and accelerated from 1994-95 when you got into the WTO set of arrangements that continue to exist. The, you know whenever there was a crisis the government would say agriculture is a state subject. Just how many times did Mr. Pawar say that? Agriculture is a state subject but the states never were consulted by the decisions and position making and decision taking of the bureaucrats and their corporate sponsors in the WTO. So you had a very fake kind of decentralization saying agriculture is a state subject you know and now we have Pachayati Raj that women's are punched, a wonderful person who is then blamed for larger actions of agriculture which are nowhere in her control. So the states were having their powers whittled away right from them, right from the time of the WTO arrangement. The second thing is let's look if this entire process is going to as it would whittle away the at the MSP and the you know APMC and allow the farmer choice. Let's look at how that has worked out in two major sectors. Let's look at how it's worked out in health and in education. In health you have one of the most private dominated health sectors in the planet and your what is your expenditure 1.28 percent at best. Yeah now in health also we saw this process in fact in the last budget pre-pandemic the government put up district level hospitals for private management. So you've seen the consolidation of the corporate sector in the sphere of health and just how has it performed during the pandemic where India is now the country with number one ranking in the number of infections daily maximum total infections racing towards overtaking the USA in a month or two in number of deaths this whole this is what the corporate sector affinity has delivered to you. I live within walking distance of one and five minutes drive of two more corporate five star hospitals. The minimum you're going to spend on a covid test in these two in these three places is between six thousand five hundred and ten thousand rupees. Yeah 11 people whom I have known have died since April five who none of them of covid but inability to get medical treatment from hospitals for their other ailments kidney failure heart failure cardiac problems and the experiences of people going to these hospitals you go there the first thing you're told no better as you're leaving the hospital a tout approaches you who is linked to the hospital management and says this is not the price for the treatment it's the price of entry and admission this is the price of admission so this is what now this is what your corporate sector has done please notice that advanced capitalist countries like Spain and Ireland in the first weeks of their lockdown perhaps the first week of their lockdown nationalized the entire private hospital structures private medical facilities everything was nationalized in that first week it was more than a month before the first government here sought 50 percent beds from the hospital private hospitals Maharashtra did demand 80 percent and you know and but we are going to somehow think that these guys are going to produce different results in agriculture in education you've had actually I think the apmc the government schools are the apmc's of the education sector they're highly flawed they're extremely poorly organized or there are all sorts of problems within them in various ways including under the dominance of the BJP the kind of textbooks they're given okay in which Hitler may have been a great man or you know all sorts of other nonsensical stuff that comes into them how many now with the pandemic comes the lockdown comes probably how many girl children below the age of 15 own a smartphone Baiju's value the value of Baiju has doubled from 5.5 billion to 10.5 billion in 12 months but most of the growth has come in the six months in the months of the pandemic now you're going to get the corporate sector tightening their grip more and more on education the private universities have recalibrated their planning they now know they can smash teachers unions they will never allow them to come they're going to shed a lot of number of teachers and use three lances so they probably the students now have choice there are thousands of different schools and colleges right which are outside the educational apmc now where the private sector and corporate sector have now take one I'll end with this one last product which is entirely operating outside the apmc milk okay Maharashtra you saw and I think news click carried those clips of farmers pouring milk on the streets when the pandemic came I'm living in Mumbai and we pay in our household 48 rupees to 60 rupees per liter 48 rupees for cow milk 60 rupees for buffalo milk because of the struggles of the Maharashtra farmers led primarily by the call India because of the huge struggles of at March in March those farmers were getting 30 rupees out of that 48 rupees price for the farmers price was 30 rupees by April the farmer was getting 17 rupees a fault from almost 50 percent 45 percent from 30 rupees but we continue to pay 48 to 60 rupees okay so that's how the private sector operated now education in health in education you name the sector you can look at how the corporates and the corporate sector have operated what makes anyone think that neoliberal capitalism and the corporate world are going to achieve different results in agriculture that's a very strong closing statement sign up that if we look around us we would see what has already happened and if we believe after all these years that this particular statement that the farmers are being freed to be delivered to whom we don't know that if we go by the experience that you are talking about I think the answer is really clear that it is going to be delivered bound hand and foot to big capital and that is the basically what this freedom is supposed to be thank you very much sign up for being with us and we'll come back to you on this and other issues we still have to discuss with you another time the issue of Indian media particularly under current conditions yeah this is all the time we have today for news click do keep visiting our website and do watch our videos