Category Archives: farmer

While there are many quixotic demands of protesting farmers, the prime concerns seems to be mistrust of the private sector and questioning the intentions of the government. Much of the farmer opposition is based on “what if” scenarios which is based on wild speculation about their futures. Many are slippery slope arguments, and arguments onContinue reading “Excerpt: What is the path forward?”

The people advancing this argument have absolutely no understanding of how markets work. Around 60-80% of foodgrain procurement in India currently happens through the private sector. Some pay the MSP prices but most do not. Forcing every private player to pay MSP will bankrupt them as the market doesn’t demand it. This will destroy evenContinue reading “Excerpt: Why not give MSP prices to all farmers?”

Indians have a paternalistic and socialistic approach to privatization. Nehru nationalized Indian Airlines hoping to provide top notch service and to make it accessible to everyone. Indira Gandhi did the same with Indian banks to make it accessible to the poor. The end result was extraordinary corruption, shutting the doors to the poor, rampant inefficiencyContinue reading “Excerpt: Will farmers be screwed by privatization?”

Just look at who is driving the protests in the enclosed list. We see the following – a bunch of purely political parties and the Bharatiya Kisan Union (highlighted in yellow). The President of the Bharatiya Kisan Union is Mahendra Tikait, the son of the same leader Mahendra Tikait who brought the Rajiv Gandhi governmentContinue reading “Excerpt: Are the protests non-political?”

It is silly to say that Indian farmers are protesting. While much of the protests are political, most of the protests seem to be from one state, Punjab. To understand why, it would help to understand that Punjab rice farmers sell 100% of their produce through MSP compared to say 1% in a state likeContinue reading “Excerpt: Are farmers from all over India protesting?”

Private sector players like Amul, Suguna, Nestle, Hatsun, and ITC work directly with farmers and set up storage and collection facilities to procure directly. This simplifies the supply chain and makes the overall costs cheaper. But this clearly is not a good deal for the middlemen, moneylenders and loan sharks. They have every interest inContinue reading “Excerpt: Who are the vested interests?”

India is stuck in the past. Figure 2 shows that it is almost 200 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to moving out of agriculture, and transitioning to other sectors of the economy like manufacturing and services. When the British ruled India, they had an incentive in keeping India out ofContinue reading “Excerpt: Long term consequences of no reforms”

Currently there are 10,000 suicides a year among farmers in India. 70% of them are tenant farmers who do not even own their land. In the present system, 70-80% of the value is captured by middlemen. For example, a farmer in Nashik gets Rs 35 per kg of onion when the consumer pays more thanContinue reading “Excerpt: What is the current condition of Indian agricultural supply chains?”

In this article I propose to make a case that if the Indian Government has the genuine interests of Punjabi farmers in mind, it makes perfect logic for the Government to pay each farmer, full cost of the foodgrains they may produce in the future and get a promise in return that farmers would notContinue reading “Excerpt: Introduction to article on Indian agriculture reforms”