The struggle against corporate encroachment in Indian agriculture

The repeal of the Three Farm Laws (TFL), which were designed to drive corporate encroachment in agriculture, by the Union Government of India (GOI) is the first significant setback to the neoliberal project in India after 2014. ¹ By this time, more than 726 protesters had lost their lives in the struggle. ² The struggle against the TFL had begun almost a year back.

The TFL were the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. These TFL were proclaimed as being passed in the Indian Parliament in a process that was fiercely contested by most opposition parties. The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, would have allowed sale and purchase outside the regulated Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) mandis (market yard), which would have increased the relative bargaining power of corporate agribusiness vis-à-vis farmers became law in September 2020. ³ The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 had been amended to allow agribusinesses including multinational corporations to have an unfettered role in the process of contract farming. This would have resulted in the drawing up of contracts that would have had adverse consequences for the incomes of farmers. Both these acts would have reduced employment in both agriculture and non-agriculture (including wage employment in mandis). In the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020, the stock quantity and supply regulation that pertains to private entities have been amended, which would have allowed these private entities (including agribusiness firms) to maintain a large stock of essential items. This would have tended to not only reduce the rate of return for farmers on agriculture but would also have led to higher food prices for workers. The Electricity Amendment Bill 2020 was proposed to remove all subsidies on electricity and to charge the ‘full’ cost of electricity to farmers.

The TFL and related laws about labour are an intimate part of the neoliberal project in India and were pursued by successive governments. Since 2003, the Union Government (led first by Indian National Congress and later by the Bhartaiya Janta Party) has made several attempts to reduce the role of state governments in Indian agriculture. ‘Agriculture’ has been part of the State List in Entry 14 of the Seventh Schedule of Constitution of India. The Indian Parliament, according to the Constitution of India, only had authority to legislate in matters pertaining to ‘inter-state trade and commerce’ (Ramakumar 2021). Thus, these TFL were also part of the process of furthering the neoliberal project in India by attenuating the federal set up, which was never more than fledgling even during the dirigiste period in India.

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Joint Front of Farmers) even after the repeal of the TFL has reiterated a long-standing demand for a legally guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) for crops. ⁴ Unlike the developed countries (with income support to the agricultural sector by government), in India government support to agriculture principally involves an MSP at which the government commits to procure crops from farmers. The richer sections of farmer households (primarily capitalist landlords and rich peasants), undoubtedly, have been the principal, but not the only, beneficiaries of the system of MSP and government procurement of agricultural produce in the post ‘Green’ Revolution period (post 1960s) in India. ⁵ As a result, the accumulation of capital by capitalist landlords and rich farmers has been substantial in this period.

Since the implementation of the TFL will adversely impact small and medium farmers as well as semi-medium farmers negatively, they have been in the forefront of the struggle. ⁶ It may be mentioned here that the share of small and marginal farmers is 86% in India (GOI 2016). ⁷ Farmers, in the states of Punjab and Haryana (which are in the forefront of the struggle), were able to benefit from the mandi system (regulated procurement centres), as the government procured most of the marketed produce of rice and wheat at the designated MSPs. However, in case of most other crops in these states, as well as all crops in other areas of India, the MSPs announced by the Union Government of India were not matched by adequate public procurement. As a result, farmers do not receive a price for their agricultural produce that equals the MSP, let alone one that exceeds the MSP, in most parts of India. This is the case because agricultural procurement by state governments is limited since the distribution of centre state financial resources are decisively tilted in favour of the Union Government in India. The Union Government too does not engage in significant procurement of agricultural produce outside of these selected states. ⁸ Although this system of public procurement, as mentioned earlier, has principally (but not exclusively) benefitted the rural rich ⁹ and is geographically concentrated in a few areas of India, a wide cross section of the peasantry intuitively and correctly understand that an attenuation of even this relatively limited system of public procurement would undermine their viability. Furthermore, it would also undermine the viability of even those peasants whose output is not publicly procured, since in the absence of public procurement the bargaining power of corporate agribusiness in the process of private procurement of agricultural produce will increase. ¹⁰

Moreover, for most small and marginal farmers, cultivation had become increasingly non-viable even before the TFL. This was the case since their costs of cultivation were rising on account of a decline in government support because of the consolidation of the neoliberal project. This involved a decline in public investment, falling subsidies, decay of agricultural extension, reduction of concessional credit, rise in fuel prices and so on. A few years after the ‘Green’ Revolution, the demand for ‘remunerative’ prices and for lowering input cost, gave rise to what is known as the new farmers movements of the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. ¹¹ Unlike previous agrarian struggles which were directed against exploitative tenancy relations, for land redistribution and rights, the new farmers movements raised the demand for ‘remunerative’ prices for agricultural produce. In Punjab, the state which is in the forefront of the current upsurge, agrarian movements related to the demand of small farmers and landless workers, re-emerged in the decade of the 2000s due to a rise in the cost of cultivation as a result of a sharp decline in public investment and an up-tick in corporate encroachment in agriculture. This process is a key underlying factor of the rise in suicides of farmers and workers that has not yet abated.

There are some writers who ignore these nuances of the process involving policy driven corporate encroachment in agriculture. As a result, they mistakenly try to argue that the struggle against the TFL involves exclusively the concerns of the rural rich. This view is not only logically invalid, but also contradicted by a recent study on the lives lost in the struggle at the borders of Delhi (which is an epicentre of the resistance; Singh & Shergill 2021). This study indicates that most of the participants in the ongoing struggle are small farmers. In their study, Singh and Shergill bring out the fact that the average land holding of farmers who lost their lives in the struggle does not exceed three acres. This figure emerges once leased land in agriculture is taken into consideration.

The TFL (and other neoliberal policies that preceded it) sought to further corporate encroachment in agriculture by imposing a double squeeze on farmers from the demand and cost sides. As a result of these neoliberal policies, there has been an adverse impact on the viability of cultivation (especially of the rural non-rich), stagnant or declining wages, a decrease in agricultural employment and adverse changes in working conditions of the rural proletariat. A proliferation of corporate encroachment in agriculture has the potential to undermine the very existence of the public distribution system in India. Such factors provide an objective basis for an alliance between peasants and workers.

The detrimental impact of corporate encroachment in agriculture has been exacerbated by the flawed response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the Union Government of India. This has given rise to an economic crisis that is multidimensional. Consequently, there has been a distress driven large-scale reverse migration to the rural areas which not only compounded the magnitude of rural surplus labour, but also resulted in a wider diffusion of the pandemic. Further actual fiscal support to the working people to tide over the pandemic has been among the lowest in the world even when compared to what was the case in other developing countries, which has had a sharp negative impact on rural workers. This strengthened the objective basis for unity between peasants and workers though this was complicated by the rise in class conflict between the rural rich and rural workers. This rise in class conflict emerged on account of the attempt by the rural rich to disproportionately transfer the burden of the impact of the flawed policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of lower wages and extra economic coercion in some areas.

The policy driven process of corporate encroachment in agriculture that culminated in the TFL was not only an assault on the farmers and workers but also an attempt to reconfigure the bourgeois-landlord alliance that has exercised state power in post-independent India. The corporate financial oligarchy (that has been emerging out of the ongoing process of contradictory compromise of the Indian big bourgeoisie with global finance) sought to relatively undermine the stature of the rural rich in this ruling class alliance. An appreciation of the political economy consequences of such a process of undermining no doubt informed the unwillingness of most bourgeois opposition parties to support the TFL. This was even though all bourgeois parties in India are incorporated in the neoliberal project in a seemingly secure manner. However, because of this incorporation even bourgeois opposition parties did not actively participate in the struggle against the TFL.

The Left in India played a significant role in crafting this setback to the neoliberal project. First, Left organisations had a significant role in the leadership-level decision-making process of the resistance to the TFL. Second, the Left’s past record of popular struggles aided the process of making the struggle both broad-based and democratic. Third, the involvement of the Left in the struggle against the TFL enhanced both the popular support for and political credibility of the resistance in Punjab. The Left could play this role given its past record of active involvement in the anti-colonial struggle, their involvement in various anti-imperialist movements and their leadership role in agrarian struggles (Gill 2004; Singh 1984).

Moreover, Left organisations were able to make a contribution to the building of a tendential working alliance between farmers and workers especially rural workers. They did so even though there are class contradictions between them that is organically interrelated with caste and gender oppression. Women, both farmers and workers, from different parts of the country have been actively participating in these protests, both at Delhi’s borders as well as in the various protests in a number of states (Kaur 2021). Given that women have had lower mobility, even in terms of employment, due to the manner in which social constraints unequally impinge on them, their participation in the farm protests now may be attributed to their perception that the TFL will not only adversely affect employment and income, but will also increase food insecurity for women.

The achievement of a tendential working alliance between farmers and workers also drew on the past record of joint struggles on land redistribution, other agrarian and social issues. One instance of this working alliance was the following: farmers and workers were also able to obtain compensation from the state government for the loss of cotton crop in a few districts of Punjab in October to November 2021. While farmers were to be paid ₹17,000 per acre as compensation, cotton picking workers were to be paid 10% of this amount. Such movements also paved the way for an issue-based alliance of workers and farmers.

The democratic movement of India was galvanised by the upsurge of farmers and workers who protested democratically around the borders of Delhi and elsewhere. The success achieved by this upsurge constitutes the first setback to the neoliberal project since 2014. It is also a significant reverse for the fascist tendency that had become near hegemonic over the neoliberal project in India. For instance, in western region of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the current upsurge of farmers and workers has played a role in an ongoing process of healing of the divisions (engendered by the fascist tendency) of communal conflict between adherents of different religions.

The Union Government of India was compelled to repeal the TFL since all efforts to diminish, reverse and defeat the upsurge of farmers and workers through repression, misinformation and attempted division of the struggle had decisively failed. The organisations that are driving the fascist tendency in India concluded that, if allowed to continue, this upsurge of farmers and workers would result in severe setbacks in many upcoming state assembly elections including in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

Partisans of the neoliberal project in India have responded in two ways to this setback. ‘In house’ components of the corporate media have tried to disingenuously ‘spin’ this setback as a ‘decisive’ and ‘mature’ initiative of the ‘leading light’ of the fascist tendency. However, the spur that this upsurge of farmers and workers has provided to the democratic movement could ignite a dialectic of popular resistance against further dimensions of the neoliberal project. Therefore, this corporate media spin is unlikely to wash. Thereby, neoliberal ‘opinion leaders’ alternatively seek to try and ring fence the rest of the neoliberal project from the currently discredited TFL.

Therefore, it will be necessary for workers and peasants to break through this ring fence if a credible challenge to the neoliberal project is to be mounted. The popular resistance that has been engendered by the upsurge of workers and peasants will need to draw lessons from the attempts in the struggle against the TFL in several respects. These include an imperative to promote an alliance between farmers and workers, a renewed focus on combatting gender and caste oppression, and an authentic effort to build solidarity among the various constituents of the democratic movement in India. Unless this alliance is strengthened, there will be a setback to the democratic movement. Resistance must be mounted not only against the fascist tendency but also against the wider neoliberal project. This resistance would have to strive for land redistribution and other agrarian support measures, an expanded employment guarantee scheme, a universal public distribution system and so on. This would require an institution of capital controls to deal with the caprices of global finance (which is the bulwark of the neoliberal project in India in general and the fascist tendency in particular). Because all bourgeois parties are linked to the neoliberal project, a viable resistance requires that workers and peasants move towards a decisive break with the neoliberal project itself along with the dislodging of the fascist tendency.