 let's talk about the farm bills once again. On Sunday, the Rajasabha passed two farm bills which will forever change the face of Indian agriculture. Now these bills were passed despite the fact that farmers, organizations, leftist parties and many of the opposition parties had been opposing them for weeks. They had demanded that there was no hurry in passing these bills, that these bills be referred to a select committee and a proper process of consultation be undertaken with inputs from stakeholders before any of these bills were passed. However, the government just pushed it through and MPs who opposed it were later punished. We talked to P Sainath, noted journalist and founder editor of the People's Archive of Rural India on who actually benefits from these bills, what happens to farmers when these bills are passed, what happens to the MSPs, what happens to the agriculture produced marketing committees, what is the future of corporate farming. Here's what you have to say. Sainath, 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 we 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 farmer's 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 backlash 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, Prabir, 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 would 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. Yeah, 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 free market as freedom and state support as slavery. The state giving supports to corporations, that's incentives. Yeah, state giving so tax breaks, tax breaks, outright grants, please. In 2013, the UPA government started a thing called the Million Farmer Project. You 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 heads 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, had, was going to teach farmers in Tamil Nadu how to grow better ragi, you know, 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 as evil empire, 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 depress the prices and then of course later on hoard them and sell at high prices. This was a post independence phenomena at which I think Nehru and Van said, I want to hang the black marketers from the lampposts. That was the mahal, the environment within which this activity 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 eye, 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 restriction from stockpiling their own produce. The restrictions were precisely for those big traders, those money lenders, those hoarders and black marketeers, agribusiness, corporations, that's who the restrictions were for. 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 presentry 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 is that, 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 3 out of those 10. Because there are going to be other intermediaries above them handling them, they don't need 10 guys, they will take 3 and integrate them into that. The new intermediaries, Praveen, are going to be wearing Armani and Gucci. That's another significant difference. In our next segment, we talk to K.K. Ragesh of the CPIM, one of the MPs who was suspended from parliament for expressing opposition. Ragesh was among the MPs who tried to protest the fact that the pables were not passed in a democratic manner, that despite the so-called procedures being followed in name, the spirit of democracy had been violated. However, he was punished for this. Here is what he had to say. It is very clear that it is on the interest of the corporates. Why? Because they are saying that it is a freedom of farmers to sell their produce. Farmers can always sell their produce. Nobody is going to prevent that. What is the issue? When farmers are selling their produce, whether they are getting the remunerative price for their produce, that is the question. Is there any provision that ensures the minimum support price for the farmers for their produce in the bill? That is the main basic question. The government is saying that, yes, we are providing MSP. MSP regime is not going to be changed. Whom the government is trying to fool. Government is talking about the MSP so far as the government procurement is concerned. Yes, there are MSPs on certain items. Certain farm producers. And that MSP is also not decided on the basis of the Saminathan commission report, which is C2 plus 50% rate, which was the promise that you made that the BJP government had made. It is A2 plus FL where certain component of calculating cost is being exempted or avoided. And that MSP also, who is getting that MSP? When government is procuring any agriculture produce, they are getting that MSP. The question is, after passing of this bill, is it for strengthening the public procurement? Not at all. This is for abdicating the government's responsibility of public procurement. And this is to then the government is trying to hand over their responsibility to the corporates, to the big business, to the traders. So what will be the impact? Can one believe that the corporates who are profit mongers are going to, because of their benevolence, whether they are going to offer MSP for farmers? Because there is no provision at all. In the, there is a provision so far as the government procurement is concerned. Government used to notify time to time on the MSP. That is only confined to government procurement. Here the question is, you are bringing out a legislation that allows private players to procure food grains according to their own choice, according to the volume that they decide from the farmers. And when allowing them with a bill, with an act, there is no provision for ensuring MSP. What does it mean? It means that farmers will not, not at all get MSP. They will be compelled to sell their produce for the, for the cheapest minimum prices. I will come to that question later. But I have two, three things to be added. See, so how to address that MSP question? That is why I had moved three amendments in the house. One is there should be a provision for ensuring MSP. And second is government has to notify an MSP, the MSP on all aggregates are produced, all aggregates are produced. And thirdly, there should be a provision that if any private player procure, procure aggregates are produced less than MSP, less than MSP, then there should be a provision for civil and penal proceedings against that private player. So, these three amendments can only ensure, only these three amendments can ensure at least MSP to the farmers. That provision is not at all there. And the question that you had asked me, in fact it was a gimmick. When he came in the morning, he was saying that he came in a private car and it is, he is, he came there not as deputy chairman as part of his official responsibilities. He came there to meet his colleagues in the parliament. We were all, no, it is quite natural. But later we understood that it was a calculated move. Why? Because immediately after his visit to the agitating members, to the members who are on strike, immediately after that, immediately after that, the prime minister had come up with a tweet saying, explaining the benevolence of the deputy chairman, who himself had declared that he is going for a one-day hunger against the MPs who were suspended. It is very clear, why all these things? It just correlates all these things because the BJP and its alleys, and its alleys, GDS, they had alienated from the people. Bihar elections are yet to come. It is at hand. So they know that in the election they are going to lose because of these particular three inter-Korean laws. The people of Bihar were watching the way that the deputy chairman was trying to push through the agenda of the BJP government. And they are also watching the way that the BJP is trying to push through the corporate agenda, anti-farmers agenda, a load that throws the farmers of country at the mercy of corporate. We have people are watching. So they smell the danger. And that is why they want to show before media that we are so benevolent. You are doing everything and posing before the people that you are innocent. All these gimmicks won't work every time, all the time. That you must understand. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from the country and the world. Until then, keep watching, news click.