Why have 300 million people been protesting in India? A few people have asked me about this so thought I’d offer a handy summary thread (1/22)

Small farmers make up 60% of India’s working population and are routinely romanticized as the backbone of the country. Nonetheless, decades of policy have given them a raw deal (2/22)

From the 1960s, innovations in agriculture (like pesticides and GM seeds) massively increased food production in India. But they also increased the need for small farmers to take out loans to pay for expensive seeds and equipment so they could produce competitively. (3/22)

These loans, with punitive repayment programmes, have dragged much of the farming population into debt spirals that have led to increased poverty, loss of dignity and, most notably, 300,000 suicides (4/22)

Against this background of farmer disempowerment, the ruling party in India, the BJP, tried to stealth pass three bills that would liberalise the agricultural sector and make farmers even worse off than they are right now (5/22)