THE assurance by senior Union Minister Mr. Rajnath Singh that the Government would continue to enhance the Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for farm produce with passage of time, should answer doubts in the minds of some sections of the society about the intentions of the Government while launching new legislations about agriculture and farmers. He has stated, like many of his colleagues in the Union Council of Ministers, that it is only misleading to suspect that the Government would one day withdraw the concept of Minimum Support Prices for farm produce. Erasing fears in this regard, Mr. Rajnath Singh has stressed that the Government aims at raising the MSPs on most farm produces to at least 1.5 times more than the actual cost the farmers need in farming. This assurance should erase any doubts about fake fears some vested interests are trying to inject into the farmers’ minds.

 

In fact, the Government has made it amply clear that the recent legislations about agriculture and farmers are in their best interest. Despite, some elements are intent upon continuing with protests, almost in the same manner as they did at the time of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). It is obvious that nearly the same political lobby is operating now as well to keep protests going against the new farm legislations. These elements kept things boiling as they mounted protests against the CAA a few months ago. Of course, the protests were restricted only to small sections and limited areas. The details showed that the anti-CAA protests were only politically motivated and started getting diluted with passage of time. The same fate awaits the so-called protests against the latest farm legislations, too.

 

Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi called the political bluff correctly when some workers from Congress party’s youth wing burned a tractor a few hundred meters away from Parliament in New Delhi. He said, in effect, that those who can burn a tractor -- that is so dear to farmers -- were only insulting the farmers’ sentiments. Mr. Modi, thus, highlighted well the totally political nature of the current protests against the farm legislations.

 

It is the misfortune of the Indian farmers that a lot of political lobbies and vested interests often dominated their discourse. A couple of major farmers’ movements did come up in the country in the past fifty years or so. Yet, their appeal mainly was political and therefore did not serve genuine interests of the farming community and agriculture as a critical sector of the economy. All these dimensions have been taken care of in the latest legislations that the Parliament passed through legitimate process. The main thrust of the new legislation is to erase possibilities of middlemen to rob the farmers’ of their dues -- which used to be the situation for countless decades since Independence. The current protests are because the new legislations seek to eliminate any political possibilities to disturb the process of rejuvenation of Indian agriculture.

 

The big grief of the whole affair is that the Akali Dal that has been a major constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has withdrawn from the combine sheerly for political reasons whose details the Akali leaders never really explained. Though the Akali withdrawal has not affected the numerical balance of the parliamentary calculations, the NDA did lose an ally of long years. However, given the nature of Akali politics, a patch-up may take place in due course of time.

 

No matter a few such details, the Government has done generally well on issues like this. It is going to be only a matter of time before the nation’s farmers realise that the new farm legislations are aimed at helping them beyond politics. When that realisation dawns, the balloon of political protests will get punctured. What needs to be understood is that the Modi Government has always remained firm on its steps that come after a lot of contemplation. That approach has often ensured success in most endeavours the Government has undertaken in the past 5-6 years since its advent in 2014.