India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
With the general elections a year away, farmers’ unions say they will build more pressure on the government to resolve their issues and ‘will take their movement to its logical end’.
The world’s biggest food corporations in grain, fertiliser, meat and dairy sectors paid $53.5 billion to shareholders in 2020-22, while the number of people facing food insecurity increased from 135 million in 53 countries to 345 million in 82 countries over the same period.
The vegetable fields of farmers living next to the Yamuna river, who ploughed the floodplains adjoining the Yamuna in Delhi for generations, are only the latest casualties in the effort to make Delhi a ‘world class’ city where the riverfront is real estate up for grabs.
A recently published report ‘Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide’ tells a story going back to 2012 about how pesticide and processed food companies spent $45 million to defeat a ballot initiative to label GMOs (genetically modified foods) in California.
The total premium paid under PMFBY by the Centre, the States and the farmers to insurance companies during the last 5 years was Rs 1,26,521 crore, whereas the insurance companies paid only Rs 87,320 crore to the farmers towards settlement of claims.
Genetically engineered Bt cotton varieties were widely promoted by powerful private companies as being less susceptible to pests, hence reduce pesticide use and increase yields. However the actual experience of farmers in India has been very different from this.
On October 18, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, GOI permitted the environmental release of genetically-modified mustard. Being the first food crop, expert studies question the environmental, biosafety and human health risks associated with hasty government approval.
The comparative study of increase in the MSP during the one decade of the Modi govt. and one decade of the Manmohan govt. reveals that the proportional increase in MSP during the Manmohan govt. was almost 2 to 3 times higher than increase in MSP during the Modi govt.
Syngenta Group, Bayer, BASF and Corteva control half of the world’s commercial seeds and 62% of the world’s pesticide market. Similarly, four companies control 44% of the global market in farm machinery.
Food prices are rising due to a combination of an engineered food crisis for geopolitical reasons, financial speculation by hedge funds, and profiteering by global grain trade conglomerates. In addition, agribusiness forms are using this crisis as an opportunity to promote GE technologies.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
Address: D-15, Ganesh Prasad, Naushir Bharucha Marg, Mumbai- 400007.
Help us increase our readership.
If you are enjoying reading Janata Weekly,
DO FORWARD THE WEEKLY MAIL to your mailing list and
invite people to subscribe for FREE!