The laws that the farmers are protesting against are: The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. They were first passed as ordinances on June 5, 2020, then introduced as farm bills in Parliament on September 14 and hastened into Acts by the present government on the 20th of that month.
The farmers see these laws as devastating to their livelihoods because they will expand the space for large corporates to have even greater power over farmers and farming. They also undermine the main forms of support to the cultivator, including the MSP, APMCs, state procurement and more. The laws have also been criticised as affecting every Indian as they disable the right to legal recourse of all citizens, undermining Article 32 of the Indian Constitution.
T.C. Vasantha joined the protestors at Bidadi town near Bengaluru. She and her sister, Putta Channamma, both farmers, came from Maddur taluk in Mandya district to participate in the protest. In K.M. Doddi, their village, Vasantha and her husband, K.B. Ningegowda, cultivate paddy, ragi and jowar on two acres of land. Their family of four – they have a 23-year-old son, a nursing student, and a 19-year-old daughter studying social work – mainly depends on their income from farming. Vasantha and her husband also take up MGNREGA work for 100 days in a year.
Karnataka’s farmers have been protesting longer than the farmers of Punjab and Haryana, said Badagalpura Nagendra, a leader of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a farmers’ organisation. “We first started protesting in May 2020 against the Land Act, and we have been raising our voice against the three new farm laws brought in by the central government.” In Bengaluru, the KRRS was one of the main organisers of the rally on Republic Day. The organisation had planned to bring in 2,000 tractors from across the state. “But the police only agreed to allow 125,” said the farm leader.
— source ruralindiaonline.org | Jan. 27, 2021
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