As a symbol of doubling down on its goal of strengthening a Covid-battered economy, the present government has stopped looking over its shoulder and is hoping to kill many birds with one stone. In other words, promulgating ordinances seems to have become the norm to deal with everything under the sun. The haste in doing so becomes evident when the government refuses to even let legislative proposals get examined before enacting them.
However, mere formulation of rules is highly unlikely to go a long way in creating a utopian society. It is only when the rules are implemented does one get to experience the pain of traversing rocky precipices in the process of deriving benefit from the introduced reform. These obstacles are nothing but manifestations of the dystopian scenario we live in.
Insofar as the purportedly transformational farm bills passed in the Parliament are concerned, one can easily envisage how far a cry would the coming times be from the bright future that these bills claim to ensure for the farmers.
Considering that farmers have always been a victim of unfair business practices in agriculture, refusing to acknowledge their concerns regarding downsides of these bills is nothing short of imbecility.
Right from producing their produce to selling it, farming is seldom a cakewalk for farmers. They face the double whammy of protecting their produce from the vagaries of climate, and of finding a genuine place for themselves in a market inundated with stakeholders who manipulate prices to suit their pockets. History is rife with examples where fluctuations in the price of agricultural produce adversely affect farmers’ income. This ultimately deprives farmers of their right to price security.
A school of thought also questions the bypassing of APMC-run krishi mandis. Although our beloved PM has swiftly allayed this apprehension, farmers know what is in store for them. They know that not walking the talk is a quintessential feature of the present government. Therefore, the utopian promise of revolutionizing agriculture is being interpreted as the government’s reluctance to take care of farmers.
To sum up, the fear that the economic condition of farmers might plunge to abysmal depths (post the enactment of these legislations) is not unfounded. There is enough evidence to believe that dystopia could cast its dark spell on their lives if government reneges on its promises or does not fulfil them in its intended spirit.