It prima facie seems that farmers protest is losing its popularity. As the time is passing, number of farmers are reducing at protest sites around Delhi. Though their leaders are trying their best to attract more farmers from different khaps/panchayat but the turnout is less than expected.
What can be the reason behind losing popularity? It is essential to enquire this strange behaviour because if the new land reforms would have adversely impacted the farmers’ interest then the farmers from all over the country would have continued the stir, even if they could not travel to the National Capital. Therefore, there are likely to be certain economic and other factors which may be having an impact on this diminishing interest.
It is pointless to discuss here the problems/challenges faced by Indian farmers as now they are well known to all, however, Before we focus on the new laws and its impact we need to understand in brief that why farming has become "घाटेकासौदा" and why the previous Govts could not address these problems in last three decades :
- The previous years governments did not focus on providing long term solutions for turning farming into a profitable industry .As their main focus was on giving subsidies on producing certain crops which resulted in shifting focus of farmers on producing certain crops which attracts subsidies i. e. Wheat, rice, soybean. Later on it became difficult for farmers to come out of this vicious cycle and shifting to other profitable crops like peanuts, fruits crops etc. Later on due to this cycle, the production was reduced while the production cost increased which resulted in increasing losses to farmers.
- Many governments in past primarily focused on giving doles ; free electricity, free water, loan waiver etc etc. It might have given temporary reprieve to farmers but in the long run made farmers more dependent on Govt which in turn failed to provide any Long term solution, as a result the farmers continued to suffer and the suicides increased.
The Current Government’s Approach.
The present government, on the other hand, has focused on these basic issues and started working on long term solutions
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