Kisan Protests Are More About Survival of the Peasantry -Prabhat Patnaik

-Newsclick.in

The three agri laws brought in by the Narendra Modi government are meant to remove the lifeline of peasants altogether and have to be repealed.

The kisans gathered around the Delhi border have unerringly put their fingers on the real issue confronting them, namely their very survival as peasants. Till now there was an arrangement in the country which, though crumbling under the impact of neo-liberalism, still kept the peasantry alive. The three agri laws brought in by the Narendra Modi government are meant to remove this lifeline altogether. These three laws thus carry the neo-liberal agenda in this sphere to its limit. This is also why there can be no meeting ground between the protesting kisans and the government, within the ambit of these laws; these simply have to be repealed.

These laws, for the first time since Independence, would allow encroachment into agriculture by unbridled capitalism, of which, naturally, the big players, i.e. corporates like Ambani and Adani, and multinational agribusiness firms, will be the main beneficiaries. To see this point, a distinction needs to be drawn first.

There was much talk in the seventies about the development of capitalism in Indian agriculture; and one may wonder why so much fuss should be made of encroachment by capitalism now if a tendency towards capitalist development had already manifested itself nearly half a century ago. If the peasantry has not disappeared despite the appearance of capitalism so long ago, then why should one worry about its disappearance now?

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