#FarmReforms
#FarmBills

Who Is Protesting and Why?

Reforms have proved controversial. In Sept, BBC wondered whether they were a “death warrant” for farmers.

Some worry whether reforms might lead to the end of wholesale markets and guaranteed

Currently, the government offers a minimum support price that acts as a safety net for farmers. Even though the government has promised to retain such a price, farmers fear its withdrawal over time.
There is an added fear that big private players will offer good money to farmers in the beginning, kill off their competition and then pay little for agricultural produce.

Farmers might go from the local monopsonies of APMCs to the national oligopoly of Amazon-like behemoths.
It is important to remember that the government offers price support only for the staple crops of the Green Revolution.

Other crops do not qualify, nor do fruits and vegetables.
Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming number of protesters are farmers from India’s northwest, the region that has benefited most from the old system. In particular, they belong to Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, the birthplace of the Green Revolution.
In 2018-19, APMCs procured 73% and 80% of the total wheat production in Punjab and Haryana respectively at a minimum support price.

This was higher than the market price, but a hefty chunk of the support price ends up in the hands of middlemen through various fees and charges.
Unknown to most, price support does not necessarily mean income support in the current system.
Farmers in the Himalayas, the Nilgiris or most other parts of India never benefited from the status quo.

As a result, farmers in 25 of India’s 28 states and all eight union territories have not taken to the streets.
The Shetkari Sanghatana, a Maharashtra-based farmers’ union founded by the economist-turned-farmer leader Sharad Joshi, and other unions support the government’s agricultural reforms.
The late Joshi was convinced that “the root cause of farmers’ problems lay in their limited access to the market.”

As per this farmer leader, open and competitive markets, instead of a top-down command-and-control agricultural economy, served farmer interests better.
Joshi opposed the APMCs, and his organization naturally supports recent reforms.

In fact, it wants to go much further.

It wants the government to remove the ban on the export of onions and threatened to pelt BJP MPs with onion bulbs if the government fails to do so.
Journalists unfamiliar with rural India, including those working for the market-friendly Financial Times, have failed to capture this nuance.

Not all farmers are protesting. Protests are largely confined to Punjab, Haryana and Jat strongholds in western Uttar Pradesh.
This northwest region around Delhi comprises less than 8% of the Indian population.

It elects 38 out of 543 MPs in the Lok Sabha, but its proximity to the capital gives it disproportionate power.

Home to Green Revolution, it has benefited from massive govt spending for decades
As per managing editor of Financial Express, farming households in Punjab get an average of $2,385 per year in fertilizer and electricity subsidies alone.

Irrigation subsidies account for another $190 per year. Punjab, Haryana and western UP benefit from other subsidies as well.
To put these figures into context, in 2019, GDP per capita in India was less than $2,100, with most farmers earning a much lower figure.
Many of those protesting are large farmers from northwestern India.

Some of their family members are part of the Indian diaspora in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and elsewhere.

Some of them continue to be absentee landlords.
They have petitioned their representatives to raise the issue with the Indian government, organized demonstrations and raised the matter with the press.

As a result, a narrative has emerged in the English-speaking press that is not entirely unbiased.
On January 26, India’s Republic Day, protesting farmers marched through New Delhi.

Some attacked the police, destroyed public property and flew flags on the Mughal-built Red Fort from where prime ministers address the nation.

This caused outrage and weakened the movement.
However, Rakesh Tikait, a farmer leader, rallied his protesters with an emotive appeal.

He broke down in tears and threatened to hang himself if the BJP government did not repeal its reforms.
Mahendra Singh Tikait who took over the nation’s capital with nearly 500,000 farmers in 1988.

Per the Indian press, Rakesh Tikait is a former policeman with assets worth 80 crore rupees ($11 million), a significant sum for a farmer in India.
It is clear that the likes of Tikait are not poor, helpless farmers crushed by debt, contemplating suicide.

They form part of the almost feudal elite that has dominated the APMCs and the rural economy for decades.
Many media outlets fail to realize such farmers have enjoyed price support, subsidies on agricultural inputs, free electricity, waived water charges, cheap credit from state-led banking sector & no tax on farm income.

Winners of old sys and desperate not to lose what they have.
Small farmers in northwestern India have joined large farmers too.

They fear the unknown. Since British rule, agrarian distress has been persistent in India.

Well-meaning measures like APMCs have backfired.

Indian countryside faces unique challenge of extreme overpopulation.
Low productivity, fragmented landholdings, lack of storage infrastructure, high indebtedness, strangulating red tape and entrenched corruption have held rural India back and caused simmering discontent. Leaders like Tikait are tapping into this discontent.

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Ambedker's 22 vows Vs BUDDHISM

/Read it Full /

Ambedker-1: I shall have no faith in Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh nor shall I worship them

BUDDHISM: I believe in them as a subordinate to buddha, we have different philoshphical model regarding them,we have many eg ,My many sect...


.Worship them , respect them ; some sects consider them to be emanation of Boddhisatva Avlokiteshwara,In tantra they are worshipped

A2:  I shall have no faith in Rama and Krishna who are believed to be incarnation of God nor shall I worship them

B: Buddha says Rama was his.

.. previous life ,and Krishna was one of previous life of Sariputta ,My many sects worship them as previous life of Buddha, Krishna is not very much known but his sculpture is seen in Buddhist temples,you can pay respect to them atleast

A3: shall have no faith in ‘Gauri’, Ganapati and other gods and goddesses of Hindus nor shall I worship them

B: Hindu goddess gauri and Ganesha is widely accepted by us we have our own mantra for them ,they seek dharini from buddha ,Our some sects worship them

A4: I do not believe in the incarnation of God
B: Ok! This is acceptable,but we do have previous life/births of Buddha and rebirth ,which you Rejected

A5: I do not and shall not believe that Lord Buddha was the incarnation of Vishnu I believe this to be sheer madness and false
Hindutva does not belong to Modi nor his party, it belongs to the people as a unifying, decolonial ideology similar to pan-Africanism or Yugoslavism.

His own brand of "positive secularism" is even milder - deepening special rights and welfare schemes for religious minorities.


After the disbanding of the Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangh, Hindutva as a political ideology does not even exist, except as a bogeyman in the minds of the Anglophone elite.

Even the BJP gave up Hindutva for civic nationalism, Gandhian socialism, and positive secularism in 1980s.

Under Modi, there has been compete policy continuity on minority rights and welfare from the Congress era, with little to no "Hindutva agenda" coming to see the light of day.

The most radical policy they can dream of is religion-neutral laws and equal rights for equal citizens.

Hindutva was essential in forming a national consciousness, but was abandoned with time. The modern BJP refuses to self-identify as a Hindutva movement, adopting moderates like Sardar Patel, Deendayal Upadhyay, and JP Narayan as their icons, rather than Savarkar or the Mahasabha.

When they say Hindu Rashtra, all they mean is an "Indic polity".

When British India was partitioned into a Muslim homeland and a Dharmic homeland, one state became a 'Ghazi' garrison state, and one the successor state to the Indic

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We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

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It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

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