Thousands of farmers from Punjab headed for the national capital in tractors, SUVs and farm vehicles clashed with the Haryana police at the Shambhu border, where they were met with teargas, water cannons and rubber bullets. The farmers had begun their march on Tuesday morning, after the previous evening’s meeting with central ministers to press for legally guaranteed minimum support prices (MSP) for their crops failed to yield results.
By evening, they had managed to remove several rows of concrete barriers and uprooted steel spikes cemented on roads to prevent them from entering Haryana, which borders Delhi.
“We want an assurance from the government that the 23 crops on which MSP is announced will have a legal guarantee. But the government wants to form another committee. This is nothing but a delaying tactic,” farmer leader Sarvan Singh Pandher, general secretary of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti, said.
Though the protesters are still far from the capital, traffic crawled at a snail’s pace at many places in the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) because of the barricades regulating access to key roads. For many, the protests revived memories of 2020, when thousands of farmers gathered outside Delhi, demanding a repeal of three new farm laws. The protest was withdrawn after the government relented, but on the condition that it will take measures to make the MSP regime wider and more effective. The laws were repealed, but an expert committee set up in July 2022 to resolve the matter is yet to submit any report.
Government agencies purchase crops from farmers at MSP, a model that works best for rice and wheat. For others like pulses and oilseeds, farmers are often forced sell to private traders at prices below MSP.
There are several deficiencies in the current MSP regime, agreed R. Ramakumar, a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and author of multiple books on India’s farm policy. “Benefits of MSP need to be spread evenly across the country. For that, the procurement infrastructure has to be built in states where MSP benefits do not reach farmers. The way support prices are calculated also needs a correction to accurately reflect the costs of cultivation,” Ramakumar said.
Currently, the cost of cultivation parameters used to calculate MSP include an imputed value of family labour, but not the rental value of farm land. Farmers have repeatedly complained that this depresses MSP numbers.
In an interview with PTI, Union agriculture minister Arjun Munda, however, said a law guaranteeing MSP cannot be brought in a hurry without consulting all stakeholders. He urged farmer groups to have a structured discussion with the government on the issue.
The protests are organized by the Kisan Majdoor Morcha, an umbrella body of farmer unions from Punjab, Haryana and other states.
“Don’t treat farmers like they are criminals”, said an emotional Madhura Swaminathan, an economist and daughter of agricultural scientist Dr M.S. Swaminathan, at an event on Tuesday celebrating the Bharat Ratna conferred on her father recently.
The agitating farmers’ key demand—fixing MSP based on the cost of cultivation plus a 50% margin—was first recommended by the Swaminathan committee in 2006.
In addition, farmers are asking for a loan waiver, social security benefits like pension, and a revamp of the crop insurance scheme. They also want higher duties on imported agricultural produce, as duty-free imports lead to lower farmgate prices.
The latest round of protests comes on the back of muted farm earnings over the past year, as the government placed export curbs on wheat, rice, sugar and onion, depressing local prices.
Farm incomes were also hit due to repeated climate shocks like heat waves and uneven rains.
The last situation assessment survey report published by the National Statistical Office in mid-2021 showed farm households earned just ₹10,218 per month on average. Close to half their monthly earnings came from non-farm sources including wage earnings. Average household debt was recorded at over ₹74,000.
The government had earlier set a target to double farm incomes in the five years to 2022, the 75th year of India’s independence. However, it is yet to update on the progress made till date.