The Farm Bills and the protests

The stated goal behind the 3 new farm laws was to reform rules around the sale, pricing, and storage of farm produce.

It allowed farmers to sell their produce at a market price directly to private players such as supermarket chains, online grocers, and businesses that use their farmer produce as raw material.

Currently, Indian farmers sell their produce at government-controlled wholesale markets or Mandis at a guaranteed minimum support price or MSP. The reforms gave farmers the choice of selling them beyond government markets.

The laws allowed private buyers to store food grains for future sales, which only government-authorized agents could do earlier.

To sum it up, this was government minimizing its interference and those of middlemen and allowing market-driven economics to take over.

While it is essential to protect the persecuted, guaranteeing a minimum selling price is also against the principles of a free market. If the farmers are allowed that luxury why not extend it to all businesses who are suffering. If that were to happen, the governments would go bankrupt.

It is also essential to restrict the middlemen who buy products at cheap rates and sells them to big players often reaping huge profits while the farmer gets very little. The bill would empower the farmer to talk directly with big players. 

PM Modi had rightly said that the government has no business being in business, the new farm laws were going to be an implementation of that notion.

The farmers, especially the poorer farmers felt they may not have the agency or the might to take on big corporate houses or enter into a price negotiation with them. 

The farmers were concerned that this may give big private players the power to dominate smaller farmers. They could dictate the price and after stockpiling grains, leave farmers with no choice to sell crops at a price that would cause them loss.

Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, camped at Delhi border points since November 26 last year, demanding repeal of the laws.

Their demands were the following:

• The guaranteed Minimum Support Price MSP to ensure procurement of crops at a suitable price.
• Protection of government-run Mandi System.
• Withdrawal of Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 as they feel that they would not get free electricity due to it.
• An end to the fines and jail sentences imposed for stubble burning.
• From the very start the government committed huge blunders when passing the farm laws

In the end, PM Narendra Modi announced the repeal of three farm laws in a televised address.