On Sunday, 20 September, the Rajya Sabha passed two of the three farm bills that the Modi government had earlier got passed in the Lok Sabha. With the opposition announcing a boycott of the Rajya Sabha in protest against the undemocratic way in which the government has rammed the bills through Parliament, the government should have no problem in getting the upper house to pass the third farm bill too.

The three bills have long names. They are: the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill – it is commonly referred to as the APMC Bypass Bill; the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill – better known as contract farming bill; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill – it has been referred to as bill to promote hoarding and blackmarketeering.

While all three bills are equally important and together comprise an entire package of agrarian reforms that the government is seeking to implement, in the TV and media debates, the entire focus has been on the APMC bypass bill. So let us first discuss it.

The APMC Bypass Bill: Promoting Free Markets?

This bill scraps the whole existing system of selling and buying agri-produce in India. The Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) are designated areas created by state governments where various agri-produce can be sold by farmers to licensed persons or commission agents. These markets are also nodes for government procurement of foodgrains, for distribution to the poor at subsidised rates through the public distribution system. This bill allows farmers to engage in trade of their agricultural produce outside the APMC market yards.

The government claims that the APMC bypass bill promotes free markets and will enable the farmer to sell anywhere in the country and get the best possible price for his produce.

Even before we dissect this bill and examine the above claim, anyone with the least knowledge of Indian agriculture can affirm that this claim is stupid. In a country where 86% farmers have a landholding of less than 5 acres (2 hectares), expecting a small farmer from say Satara (in Maharashtra) to load his crop on a bullock cart and go all the way to Indore in Madhya Pradesh or Ludhiana in Punjab to sell his crop there is absurd. Small farmers are so keen to sell their produce at the earliest that they are generally not willing to go to faraway markets even in their own state, even if they get to know that they may get a better price there. Which is why, the National Commission on Farmers had recommended that mandis should be available to farmers within a radius of 5 km.

E-NAM: Turning Point for Agriculture?

This is not the first time the Modi government has attempted to promote free markets in agriculture. In 2016, it had announced with much fanfare the launch of an online trading platform, called the National Agricultural Market or e-NAM. The Prime Minister himself chose to announce it, in a speech given on the historic occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. He claimed that the scheme will give farmers the freedom to sell their produce anywhere in the country, would enable a farmer in Bengal to sell to a farmer in Kerala, would enable agricultural incomes to rise, and would be a turning point for Indian agriculture.

Four years have since gone by. E-NAMs have been a complete failure. That is actually not surprising. They had to fail, in an agriculture that is dominated by small farmers and small traders. Most farmers are not technologically savvy to sell online; even more important, they want to sell their produce at the earliest and get their money so that they can repay the loans they have taken and prepare for the next crop, and obviously, they are not confident whether on selling online they will get their payment on time. At the same time, the small traders buying the crop online in faraway markets are not confident of the quality of the crop they have purchased, if the crop is graded about how good is the quality of grading, and whether the crop will be delivered to them on time. And so, most farmers and traders are more comfortable with physical trading rather than online trading.[1]

Instead of agriculture becoming more prosperous, agricultural growth rate has actually fallen during these four years, average agricultural growth rate is less than that during the UPA years, and the agricultural crisis has continued to worsen during the Modi regime.

Bihar: APMC Act Repealed in 2006

What the Centre is attempting to do at the national level now has already been implemented in Bihar. In 2006, the state of Bihar repealed the APMC Act and abolished APMCs. It was claimed that this would eliminate middlemen, promote efficiency in the marketing system, enable farmers to get better price for their produce, and incentivise private investment in agriculture. Economists claimed that Bihar will turn out to be the harbinger of a new market-driven revolution in agriculture. Fourteen years have gone by, Bihar farmers are still waiting for the miracle to happen. In 2019, the National Council for Applied Economic Research conducted a study of the agricultural situation in Bihar. Its report says:[2]

• There has been an increased volatility in grain prices after 2006, which negatively affected the crop choices and decisions of farmers to adopt improved cultivation practices; this could be one of the reasons for the low growth of agriculture in the state.
• Bihar’s policy makers had expected an increased flow of private investments into the agriculture sector, but it did not take place.
• Farmers are left to the mercy of traders who unscrupulously fix a lower price for agricultural produce that they buy from them.

Another report about Bihar published in the Hindu Business Line found that[3]:

• Private mandis have come up all over the state, functioning on the roadside, without any infrastructure. There is hardly any facility other than the roadside space made available for the transaction of produce. There are generally only a few makeshift sheds from which the mandi operator works and monitors the functioning of the market.
• In contrast to the assumptions of our urban economists that free markets will enable farmers to sell anywhere and get the best possible price for their produce, the report says that farmers in Bihar sell at the mandis nearest to their farms, as they cannot afford to go to faraway markets.
• At these private mandis, farmers are forced to pay a market fee of 2%, which is not to be paid in the regulated APMC markets.
• There is no auction, farmers have no option but to sell at the price being offered.
• Also, if there is a malpractice, there is no one the farmers can approach.

Bihar is among the leading producers of maize in India. For maize, this year (2020) most farmers reported getting a price of ₹1,000-1,300 per quintal, as against the official minimum support price (MSP) of ₹1,850. For wheat too, farmers in Bihar reported receiving prices 10-15% lower than the MSP.[4]

Devinder Sharma, the noted agricultural analyst, says that while giving farmers low prices, unscrupulous traders from Bihar illegally transport quite a sizeable quantity of wheat and paddy after every harvest to Punjab and Haryana to sell it there, as price realisation there is better because of the APMC network and government procurement.[5]

Clearly, the free market reforms have completely failed in Bihar. This is also borne out by data provided by Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in the Rajya Sabha last year. He stated that farmers in Bihar had the lowest income in the country. The average income per agricultural household in Bihar was just Rs 3,558 per month. Haryana recorded the highest farmer’s monthly average income of Rs 14,434. Haryana is among the states with the best APMC mandi network in the country.[6] This again only goes to prove the point we have been trying to make, that all this talk about free markets benefiting farmers is all bunkum.

That agriculture is in deep crisis in Bihar is also borne out by out-migration figures from Bihar. According to estimates made by Professor Kundu for 2020, Bihar accounts for around 14% of the total inter-state out-migration in the country, the second highest in the country after Uttar Pradesh.[7] During the corona pandemic, Bihar recorded the largest number of migrants returning home.[8] This only goes to show that the rural areas are in great distress in Bihar, with agriculture not being able to provide employment, because of which people are migrating to other states in search of work.

Have Free Markets Worked in USA-Europe?

Free markets in agriculture have not worked anywhere in the world, even in the developed countries. In the USA and Europe, there are no MSPs, no APMCs, and there are no controls on stock holdings – there are absolutely free markets, the kind of markets the Modi government is seeking to usher in India through its three agricultural reform bills. And yet, agriculture in those countries is crisis ridden. In 2018, the then Chief Economist of US Department of Agriculture, Robert Johannson, had stated, “Real farm prices, when indexed for inflation, have fallen sharply since 1960.” With median farm incomes being in the negative for several years, and with farm bankruptcy growing to $425 billion, US farmers are struggling to survive.[9] Another report in the Guardian dated 11 December 2018 says that since 2013, net farm income for US farmers has declined 50%. Median farm income for 2017 is projected to be negative $1,325. Because of the growing agricultural crisis, the suicide rate among male farmers in the USA is 1.5 times higher than the general population, and even this figure is likely to be a huge underestimate as the data collected skipped several major agricultural states (data from a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).[10]

Consequently, agriculture in the developed countries is only surviving due to massive agricultural subsidies provided by the government. In 2018, the OECD countries, a bloc of the world’s richest 37 countries, provided agricultural subsidies to the tune of $246 billion to their farmers.[11]

Despite this global experience, and Indian experience too, the Modi government is pushing for free markets in agriculture. Defending the APMC bypass bill and other bills, the PM himself declared in a speech on September 21 that ‘powerful gangs’ (takatvar giroh) had come to control our agriculture who were taking advantage of our farmers’ helplessness, and so these agricultural bills have been introduced to give the farmer the freedom to sell his produce to anyone anywhere in the country, on his terms, and not just in the nearby APMC mandi.

An exact repeat of the PM’s speech made on 14 April four years ago. The PM’s speech writer seems to have done a cut and paste job. But it was enough to send the country’s media and intellectuals into a hysterical campaign in support of the new bills, that they would give free market freedom to farmers, liberate him from the clutches of the mandis, and will revolutionise agriculture.

But the Majority of Farmers are Already in Free Markets!

However, the strange truth is, the majority of farmers in India are already in free markets! The total number of APMC mandis in the country is just around 18% of the number required! As per norms of National Commission on Farmers, an APMC should be available to farmers within a radius of 5 km. This would require the country to have 42,000 APMCs, but only 7,700 exist.[12] Assuming that farmers are distributed evenly across the country, this means that only around 20% of the Indian farmers sell their produce in APMC mandis.

In the APMC mandis, two kinds of transactions take place. One is government procurement, at prices declared by the government, called the Minimum Support Price or MSP. The other is sales through auction to private traders; traders are issued licences to operate within the market and private traders are not allowed to buy the produce directly from farmers.

While the government declares MSP for 23 crops, government procurement takes place mainly for two crops – wheat and rice. Even for these two crops, government procurement is only around one-third of the total produce of these crops nationwide; the remaining is purchased by private traders. According to the Shanta Kumar committee report, submitted in 2015 to the government, only 6% of the farmers in the country benefit from government procurement and sell at MSP.[13]

From the number of APMC mandis in India, we have assumed above that around 20% farmers sell their produce in these mandis. If only around 6% farmers are able to sell their produce at government guaranteed prices, this means the remaining 14% must be selling their produce to private traders within the APMC mandis.

Various reports suggest that the actual number of farmers who sell their produce within the mandis is probably more than 20%, and is more likely to be around 35%: Himanshu, Associate Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, pegs this figure at 20%; Devinder Sharma, the noted agricultural expert, cites an NSSO report of 2014-15, according to which nearly 54 to 84% farmers (depending on crops) in the kharif marketing season had sold their produce outside the mandis to private traders, implying that around 16 to 46% farmers had sold their produce within the mandis; while Kavitha Kuruganti, who is associated with Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture, estimates that probably around 35% of the farmers sell their produce in mandis.[14]

This only means that despite the shortage of APMC mandis in the country, farmers are willing to go to mandis which at some distance to sell their crops, implying that farmers prefer to sell their produce to private traders within APMC mandis rather than to traders outside mandis.

Whatever be the percentage of farmers who sell their produce within the APMC mandis, it is obvious from the above discussion that the majority of Indian farmers, at least 60 to 70% of them, sell their produce to private traders outside the mandis. In the words of our Prime Minister, they are already in free markets, free to sell their produce to anyone they wish, on their terms!

Estimating Loot of Farmers by Free Markets

While defending the agricultural bills, the PM has gone on record to say that the APMCs have become dens of vested interests and are exploiting farmers. But it is obvious from the above statistics that the majority of farmers do not feel that way. This is also proven by the fact that the agitation by the farmers against the bills is the strongest in the states of Punjab and Haryana, precisely the two states which have the best APMC network in the country.

It is true that there is corruption in the APMCs, and that traders cartelise and prevent farmers from getting a decent price. But farmers also know from their real life experience that the situation is the same outside the APMCs too; there too, the traders take advantage of the economic weakness and helplessness of the small farmers and fleece them. The reason why farmers prefer to sell within the APMC mandis rather than outside is because the mandis also provide them several benefits, like infrastructural facilities (storage, weighing, etc.), guaranteed payments by traders, etc.

The extent to which traders fleece farmers in the name of free markets is brought out in a joint study undertaken by the OECD and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). It estimated that during the 17-year period 2000-01 and 2016-17, Indian farmers suffered an income loss of Rs 45 lakh crore (at 2017-18 prices), on account of being denied a fair price for their produce.[15]

Another Consequence of APMC Bypass Bill: Eliminating the PDS

As the farmers’ agitation becomes more intense across the country, the government is now arguing that the bill does not scrap APMCs, it only gives farmers the freedom to sell wherever they want.

Again the govt is resorting to trickery. While it is true that the bill only bypasses the APMCs, it will effectively sound a death knell for them. The reason is simple. As per the provisions of the bill, traders buying outside the APMC market yards will not have to pay any taxes, whereas those trading inside the premises will have to pay the APMC levies. APMCs levy taxes / cesses of around 4 to 6%. Without a level playing field, this will obviously mean that private traders will not buy produce from farmers inside the mandis, mandi incomes will fall, and the APMCs will not be able to maintain themselves, ultimately leading to their collapse.

For instance, in Punjab, the tax collected by the APMCs is around Rs 3,600 crore or so, and this is used to maintain the sprawling network of regulated mandis built across the state over 60 years, which comprises of roughly 1,840 mandis, sub yards and purchase centres spread across the state. The tax is also used to maintain the excellent 70,000 km network of village roads in Punjab, which connect every village to the nearest mandi.[16]

The APMC mandis also serve as the nodal points for government procurement of foodgrains; with their collapse, government procurement will also drastically reduce.

This brings us to another important, but hidden, agenda behind the APMC bypass bill – the government actually wants to scale down and eventually scrap procurement of foodgrains and wind up the Food Corporation of India. As a first step, the Economic Survey 2019-20 of the Government of India calls for reduction in the number of beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act from the present 67% to just 20%.

As procurement falls, it would automatically also mean that farmers would no longer get MSP for wheat and rice.

Free Markets in Agriculture: Responsible for Agricultural Crisis

It is not the absence of free markets, but it is because the overwhelming number of small farmers in the country are subject to the vicissitudes of free markets – just 6% farmers get the Minimum Support Price announced by the government, the remaining farmers are forced to sell to private traders in free markets – where traders fleece them and force them to sell at a loss, that agriculture is in deep crisis in the country.

By the time the Modi government came to power in 2014, Indian agriculture was already in crisis due to the implementation of ‘free market’ or neoliberal policies over the previous two decades, ever since India began globalisation in 1991. The Modi government came to power, promising to take steps to tackle this crisis, implement the Swaminathan Commission recommendations and give farmers a MSP of 50% above the comprehensive cost of production (called C2), and double the real income of farmers in five years. But after coming to power, it made a complete U-turn on all these promises, and has actually accelerated the implementation of neoliberal policies, pushing agriculture into yet deeper crisis.[17]

Consequently, agricultural growth rate during the Modi years (2014-20) has fallen to an average of 3.2%, from 3.7% during the previous UPA years (2004-14).

What is the Real Intention Behind the Agricultural Bills

Clearly, the defense given by the Prime Minister that the three agricultural bills are intended to free farmers from the clutches of APMCs and usher in free markets – is an outright lie, as the farmers are already in the clutches of free markets. Then, what is the real intention behind the government’s desperation to ram the three agricultural bills through the Parliament, throwing all democratic norms to the winds, despite massive protests by the Opposition parties as well by farmers across the country?

To understand the real intentions of the Modi government, we need to see the APMC bypass bill in conjunction with the other two agriculture bills, and then relate it to the overall orientation of the economic policies under the Modi regime.

i) Contract Farming Law: This law essentially means that the government is allowing big traders and corporations to directly enter into agreements with farmers and buy produce from them. What most people do not realise is that the big agribusiness corporations are giant-sized. Thus, for example, the total value of arrivals of agricultural products in all marketing committees of Maharashtra in 2017-18 was Rs 51,093 crore[18], while the total sales of just a single giant agribusiness corporation, the Bayer-Monsanto group (now known as Bayer group), that year was 36,742 million Euros, which works out to Rs 2.97 lakh crore.[19] In other words, Bayer is so big that it can buy up all the agricultural produce coming to all the marketing committees in Maharashtra!

ii) Amendment to the Essential Commodities Act: This scraps limits on the amount of foodgrain stocks traders or companies can keep; it also ends government intervention to control price increases (with the provision that government will step in if prices rise significantly).

These two bills / laws essentially allow big companies to buy as much as they want from farmers, and hoard it to drive up prices. At the same time, the government is also taking steps to gradually end government procurement and dismantle the public distribution system (PDS) by gradually eliminating the nationwide APMC network. An important role of the PDS was to keep a check on speculation in foodgrain prices by traders; if prices went up, the government could quickly step in to bring them down by releasing foodgrains from its stocks. Now, this will end, enabling private corporations to indulge in speculation in even foodgrain prices.

Consequence of the Three Agricultural Bills

The three bills will thus enable big traders and corporations to monopolise agricultural trade.

Supporters of this reform will argue that since there are many corporations, competition amongst them will enable farmers to get better prices! This is where mainstream economics is completely wrong: giant corporations do not compete with each other; since they are so big, and have enormous amount of funds, engaging with each other in price competition will be self-destructive for all of them. Therefore, they collaborate in the matter of prices; they actually form cartels and divide up the market among themselves.[20]

These giant corporations will enter into contract with small farmers over entire regions, and initially offer better prices to farmers, as they have enormous funds at their disposal. Since stock limits have been removed, they will be able to buy and store huge quantites of crops from farmers. Therefore, in just a few years, the MNCs will gradually acquire monopoly over the buying of agricultural produce from farmers. Once they monopolise purchases from farmers, driving out all the small traders, they will then start lowering procurement prices from farmers (and government procurement systems would have completely ended by then). The farmers will have no option but to sell to them.

This has been happening all across the developing countries. To give a few examples: a decade ago, third world coffee producers earned $10 billion from a global market of over $30 billion. Now they receive less than $6 billion out of a global market of $60 billion. African producers as a whole get only 9 percent of the retail price of an exported apple.[21] Such examples can be multiplied.

In the long run, this will mean that small farmers will be squeezed and forced to abandon agriculture, and agribusiness corporations will acquire control over their lands and set up huge farms, like is happening in other developing countries and has already happened in the developed countries.

Secondly, this will also mean that lakhs of our small traders who presently buy produce from farmers in the mandis, called arhtiyas, will be driven out of business. Many would argue that the arhtiyas also form cartels, and thus cheat farmers; so there is no harm in this. But replacing arhtiyas with big corporations is a far more worse solution; shutting down APMCs to end corruption in the mandis is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, steps need to be taken to democratise mandis, which can be done in consultation with farmer organisations.

Thirdly, this is going to result in a huge increase in the country’s alarming ‘hunger and malnutrition crisis’. The mandis are the place where most government procurement takes place. So, by dismantling the mandis and allowing private traders to procure directly from farmers, the Modi government has taken another step towards implementing another of its pet schemes that it announced during its first term itself – ending governmeng procurement of foodgrains, gradually eliminating the Public Distribution System and replacing it by cash transfer to farmers. This will not only put an end to all hopes of farmers getting a fair price for their crops through government intervention, the destruction of the PDS will enable traders to indulge in speculation in foodgrain prices – this was one of the important reasons why the PDS had been introduced in the country. That would then require the government to increase its cash transfers to the poor, which it is obviously not going to do as its main aim of eliminating the PDS is to reduce its food subsidy bill. This is therefore going to spell absolute disaster for the crores of impoverished people in the country.

Finally and most importantly, this is also going to affect our food security and therefore our sovereignty (we discuss this issue below).

Ever since India started opening up its market to foreign corporations with the beginning of globalisation in 1991, the giant agribusiness corporations have been scheming to take control over Indian agriculture. While allowing foreign corporations to enter into the rest of the economy, successive governments have resisted their entry into Indian agriculture. Now, taking advantage of the lockdown, the anti-national BJP government is allowing them to seize control of Indian agriculture.

Modi Government: Accelerating Corporatisation of the Entire Economy

The three agricultural bills are a part of the entire gamut of neoliberal, pro-corporate, economic policies that the Modi government has sought to implement ever since it came to power in 2014. The only new development is, it is now taking advantage of the fact that people cannot protest on the streets due to the pandemic, to implement these policies at an accelerated pace. During the past few months, it has announced large scale privatisation of public sector corporations, including the railways and oil and gas corporations; it is even privatising defence equipment and the space sectors! It is allowing private sector profiteerers to usurp the country’s mineral wealth, including even the coal sector. The financial sector corporations, including public sector banks and insurance companies, are also being privatised – endangering the safety of lifetime savings of crores of working people. It is pushing through changes in environmental laws – that put short-term profits of big business over the interests of future generations. Several projects which threaten the environment and our precious natural resources have been cleared during the lockdown, even in protected areas, trampling upon the Forest Rights Act, which will result in massive displacement of tribal communities. BJP ruled state governments are dismantling labour laws, won by the working people after decades of struggle, so that corporations can further squeeze workers, make them work long hours at rock bottom wages. And so on …

Handing Over Control of Indian Agriculture to Foreign Corporations

Foreign agribusiness corporations want to seize control of India’s agriculture as India has some of the best agricultural lands in the world. Being a tropical country, a wide variety of crops are grown in India, including so many types of vegetables and fruits, as well as a huge variety of cereals, pulses and oil-crops. On the other hand, the cold temperate regions of the world, where most of the developed countries are located, can neither grow such a range of crops, nor can they grow them throughout the year. So, the agribusiness corporations of the USA and the European Union have been seeking to acquire control of Indian agriculture, so that they can use our lands to produce the crops needed by the developed countries, and at the same time they have been pressing upon India to import foodgrains. On the face of it, this model appears to be beneficial for India, as we will be exporting high value crops like flowers and vegetables, and importing low value crops like foodgrains. But in reality, this is a myth, another of the neoliberal myths promoted by international capital. That is because these foreign agribusiness corporations will be in control of this entire agricultural trade. When we export flowers, fruits and vegetables to Europe and America, since they will be controlling the exports and prices, we will get low prices for our exports. And when we import foodgrains from them, since again this trade will be controlled by them, we will have to pay through our nose for foodgrain imports. But that is not all. The most important problem with this deal is: since foodgrains are among the most fundamental of all necessities, while flowers and fruits are not, once we become dependent on the developed countries for our food supply, our very sovereignty will be at stake, they can impose any conditions that they desire on us.

We are not at all exaggerating. This has already happened in Africa – the reason for the periodic famines in sub-Saharan Africa is that these countries allowed Western corporations to reorient their agriculture towards growing non-food export crops instead of food grains.

Thus, by the passage of these three bills, the ‘nationalistic BJP government’ is not only creating conditions for foreign agribusiness corporations to seize control of Indian agriculture, it has also put the country on the path to increased hunger and even famines. And it has surreptitiously done this taking advantage of the pandemic lockdown.

Continue the Fight against the Three Farm Bills, Till they are Withdrawn!

Demand the Implementation of Swaminathan Commission Recommendations!

Even if the Parliament has passed the three bills, if the farmers’ organisations are determined, they can force the government to suspend the implementation of these bills. Ultimately, supreme power in the counry lies with the people.

But the struggle must not end there. We need to advance our struggle and mount pressure on the government to change its orientation from favouring entry of agribusiness corporations in agriculture towards supporting India’s small farming community. For this, it needs to: increase its investment in the agricultural sector; implement the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations for agriculture; increase government investment in agricultural research and improve extension services to end the increasing control of agribusiness corporations over areas such as seeds, fertilisers and insecticides and pesticides; and strengthen the public distribution system and universalise it.

Notes

1. For more on this, see “Prime Time With Ravish Kumar: Is Media Coverage Of Farmers’ Protests Adequate?”, September 24, 2020, https://www.youtube.com.

2. Himanshu, “Lessons from Bihar’s abolition of its APMC system for farmers”, 24 Sep 2020, https://www.livemint.com; Sandhya Ravishankar, “The Bihar Model Of Agriculture & Why It Failed”, 26 Sept 2020, https://www.thelede.in.

3. Sukhpal Singh, “APMCs: The other side of the story”, January 24, 2018, https://www.thehindubusinessline.com.

4. Himanshu, “Lessons from Bihar’s abolition of its APMC system for farmers”, op. cit.

5. Devinder Sharma, “Diluting the APMC, MSP regimes isn’t a good idea”, May 11, 2020, https://www.thehindubusinessline.com.

6. “In these 6 states, farmer families live on less than Rs 5,000 per month”, July 16, 2019, https://www.financialexpress.com.

7. “Explained: Indian migrants, across India”, 29 April 2020, https://indianexpress.com.

8. “Data From 116 Districts Shows 67 Lakh Migrant Workers Have Returned Home”, 11 June 2020, https://thewire.in.

9. Devinder Sharma, “Farm Bills: Liberation or death knell?”, Sep 27 2020, https://www.deccanherald.com.

10. “Why are America’s farmers killing themselves?”, https://www.theguardian.com.

11. Devinder Sharma, “A case to make MSP legal right of farmers”, 22 June 2020, https://www.tribuneindia.com.

12. Devinder Sharma, “Modi Government’s Agricultural Market Reforms: Old (and Discredited) Wine in a New Bottle?”, 23 May 2017, https://thewire.in.

13. Shoaib Daniyal, “Modi insists farm bills have nothing to do with MSP – so why are farmers protesting?”, September 23, 2020, https://scroll.in.; Kiran Pandey , “6 reasons why India has failed to solve the riddle of agriculture marketing”, 6 January 2019, https://www.downtoearth.org.in; Bharath Kancharla, “Part-2: How much of the Rice & Wheat produce in the country is procured by the Government?”, June 6, 2020, https://factly.in.

14. Himanshu, “Hardly the 1991 moment for agriculture”, 25 May 2020, https://www.thehindu.com; Devinder Sharma, “Ensure no trading takes place below MSP”, 24 September 2020, https://www.tribuneindia.com; Kavitha Kuruganti, “Will the farmers’ produce trade and commerce (promotion and facilitation) ordinance 2020 be a game-changer for Indian farmers?” June 15, 2020, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com.

15. Devinder Sharma, “Agriculture in need of economic stimulus”, 17 December 2019, https://www.tribuneindia.com.

16. Devinder Sharma, “Best reforms would be if the APMC mandi network is expanded”, 14 June 2020, https://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com; Vivian Fernandes, “Centre’s ordinance to ‘ease’ agriculture trading will hit Punjab’s revenues hard”, 16 June 2020, https://www.nationalheraldindia.com.

17. For more on this, see: “Spectre of Fascism”, Published by Janata Trust and Lokayat, 2016. Available on internet at lokayat.org.in,; Neeraj Jain, “Modinomics = Corporatonomics Part II: Modi’s Budgets and Agriculture”, Janata Weekly April 21, 2019, https://lohiatoday.files.wordpress.com.

18. “Agriculture Export Policy (AEP) of Maharashtra State”, Prepared by Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board, 20 September 2019, https://www.msamb.com.

19. “Names, Facts, Figures about Bayer – Bayer Japan”, https://www.bayer.jp.

20. For more on this, see: “Fight FDI in Retail”, Lokayat publication, 2012, lokaya.org.in; also see: Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, K.P. Bagchi and Company, Calcutta, 1994.

21. Mohan Guruswamy, Kamal Sharma, “FDI in Retail—II: Inviting more Trouble?” Centre for

Policy Alternatives, New Delhi, Feb 2006, http://cpasindia.org; Aspects of India’s Economy, No. 43, Research Unit for Political Economy, July 2007, http://rupe-india.org.