This Week in Human Rights News

Farmers protest new agriculture laws in India

Sources: TIME, Courrier International, Indian Express, The Guardian, CNN 

• For the third consecutive week, hundreds of thousands of farmers across India have been protesting and striking in response to new laws that would deregulate the sale of crops. 

• On Tuesday December 8th, hundreds of thousands of farmers blocked all roads into the capital, Delhi, for most of the day. Protests spread across the country, in an effort to pressure the government to repeal the new laws.

• Over 450 farmer’s unions and organisations supported Tuesday’s nationwide strike.

• The movement has garnered international support, with protests of solidarity happening in France, Germany, United States, Canada, Netherlands and the UK. 

• The three new laws were quickly passed by the government in September, without consulting any farmers. 

• The government argues that the new laws will ‘empower’ farmers.

• However, farmers and unions are saying the new reforms would put them at risk of losing their business and land to large corporations.

• The previous laws, which guaranteed farmers a set price for certain crops, have been around since India’s Green Revolution in the 1960s. 

• The protested reforms would only worsen the poverty and underdevelopment of India’s farming industry, and place the farmers and small landholders at the mercy of big corporations.

• While the new laws don’t eradicate the guaranteed minimum prices, they do get rid of previous restrictions on corporations buying land and stockpiling commodities beyond a certain level. 

• They also allow businesses to bypass markets where farmers’ produce is normally sold, making direct deals that farmers worry will be less subject to regulations. 

• This impacts consumers globally - as India is a leading exporter of Basmati rice, second-largest producer of rice, and top producer of spices, and other pantry items such as turmeric, ginger, garlic, and curry powder among others.

• Nearly 50% of India’s workforce is in agriculture - but this industry is plagued by poverty, underdevelopment and suffering. The farming industry suffers from high rates of deaths by suicide. 

• In the past 25 years, it is estimated that 400,000 farmers in India have died by suicide, the highest rates of farmer suicides in the world.

• Many of these deaths are debt related.

• Talks between the government and farmer unions are set to resume soon - the first five rounds of talks proved inconclusive, and  the sixth round did not take place after farmers rejected the government’s draft proposal to amend the provisions. 

• Farmer unions said they would come for talks only if the law was repealed. 

• A nationwide protest is set to happen on Monday, where the heads of all farmer unions will observe a hunger strike from 8 am to 5 pm.