 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. During this pandemic, the Narendra Modi-led Bharti Chanta Party government in India has pushed through multiple legislations that are a direct assault on people's rights. The latest among these are three bills on agriculture. The government passed these three bills, brazenly flouting parliamentary rules and ignoring the protesting farmers across the country. Two of these were passed on Sunday, September 20th. The Farmers and Produce Trade and Commerce Promotion and Facilities Bill 2020 and Farmers Empowerment and Protection Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill 2020. Members from opposition parties walked out of the parliament and protest of the manner in which these bills were pushed through. However, the BJP government remained underturbed. On Tuesday, September 22nd, the third bill, Essential Commodities Amendment Bill 2020, was passed in the upper house of the parliament along with six other bills in the absence of opposition parliament members. What are these farm bills and why are farmers opposing them? The first bill is the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce Promotion and Facilitation Bill 2020, which analysts have dubbed as the APMC Bypass Bill 2020. APMCs are agricultural produce market committees are essentially government regulated market places for agricultural produce. These markets are places where farmers can sell certain crops such as wheat and rice at minimum support prices which are fixed. The MSPs and the APMCs were introduced as a way of providing remunerative prices and a short procurement of crops to farmers. While the implementation of these policies has been far from perfect, the APMC Bypass Bill as it's being called is set to further weaken these provisions. This bill will set up a new unregulated market space called the trading area which will have no oversight. While the government is trying to present this as a way for farmers to access new markets, farmers have always been free to sell their produce to private players. However, this move will incentivize traders to move out of the regulated markets and farmers will find it increasingly difficult to get guaranteed prices for their crops. What is going to happen is the big agribusinesses so-called aggregators, sponsors and processors and so on, they are going to dictate the prices. There is not going to be any control over them. The earlier system had a price support mechanism and also a mechanism of price support mechanism for the farmers and a price control for the consumers. These are being totally dismantled by these ordinances. Any kind of protection that the farmers would have had as far as price support is concerned, that is not going to be any longer there. The APMCs also have other advantages. They provide collective bargaining power to farmers and they also provide information to government to determine the prices of crops. With the government gradually pulling out of crop procurement, it will have no way of gauging prices and intervening in the market in the interest of farmers if needed. The farmers will be left at the mercy of big capital. Linked closely to this is the Essential Commodities Amendment Bill 2020, which is also being called the Food Holding Freedom for Corporates Bill 2020. With the passing of this bill, various items such as cereals, pulses, oil seeds, edible oils, onions and potatoes have been removed from the list of essential commodities. This bill also essentially legitimizes holding of produce by private companies as it removes any limits on stock holding. They can thus take advantage of high prices with the government having no knowledge of what stocks exist with who, when and where. This is being done in the name of attracting private investment in post-harvest infrastructure. By the Essential Commodity Act Amendment earlier this was actually brought in to ensure that there is no hoarding and so on. So the consumers would also get the agricultural produce, whether it is cereals, pulses, oils, oil seeds and so on at affordable prices. Now those controls have been removed and even foreign players as well as big agribusinesses, it promotes hoarding in a way and also there is no control. There is no limits on how much they can keep. Finally the farmers empowerment and protection agreement of price assurance and farm services bill 2020 which is also being called the contract farming bill 2020. This bill basically allows the system of contract farming in India. However 86% of the farming community in the country owns less than 2 hectares of land. The policy of contract farming shifts the power balance away from the farmer to the company, especially when the land holdings are so small. The farmer will in effect become a land owning tenant acting in the interest of corporations. India has been going through an unrelenting agrarian crisis for the past many years now with rising number of farmers suicides every year. Farmers have led many major movements demanding an improvement in conditions. However these moves by the BJP government are in the opposite direction from what farmers want. With these changes which are happening where they are trying to paint a rosy picture that these big agribusinesses will pay higher prices to the farmers that kind of a campaign is being done that is not going to actually translate on the field. The small farmer would not have the bargaining power with these big companies and once they establish their monopolies they totally dictate the terms. Farmers have been demanding for the remunerated prices to be a legal right and for maximum procurement at these prices through the regulated market places. Farmers want freedom from debt instead the government is dismantling whatever protection mechanisms exist and so farmer organizations have been leading protest actions for the past few months against these anti-farmer legislations. They have burned these bills they have sent from Miranda to the prime minister and they have held rallies. September 25th has been declared national resistance day to continue these protest actions. The All India Kisan Sabha that is the All India Farmers Organization which is leading this struggle has issued the slogan what the parliament can do the streets can undo.