In the past few weeks, pizza langars or foot massagers set off a ridiculed campaign against them. They were further discredited when a section of propagandists called it a demonstration of rich farmers and middlemen and even labelling them as Khalistanis.

Visit the Tikri border and this narrative gets shattered. The majority of the farmers gathered here are small and marginal farmers from south Punjab and the larger Malwa area of Punjab comprising 14 districts that are long hit by rural distress.

Sukhdev Kokri, general secretary of BKU Ekta Ugrahan that is leading the protest here at the Tikri border said that more than two lakh farmers from Punjab have already attended the protest here and more than 60,000 have joined in the last one week. To say that the protest at the Delhi borders is all about big farmers is a denial of ground realities. It is a mass movement of farmers fighting for their survival and pro-corporate policies of the present regime at the centre, he adds.

Recently, over 2000 widows of farmers who had committed suicide from Sangrur, Barnala, Bathinda and other parts of South Punjab participated in the protest at Tikri, asking the centre to repeal these acts or new reforms as it would otherwise multiply the number of suicides by farmers in Punjab.

Thirty-eight-year-old Puran Singh, a small farmer from Deep Singh Wala village in Punjab’s Faridkot district, who owns a little over a hectare (3 acres) of land, is determined to get these acts repealed. He is one of the protesters who has been at the site for a month.

He says that his annual farm earning is not more than Rs. 50,000 per acre. It is grossly inadequate as he has aged parents and school-going children at home. “At a time when everyday life is a struggle, a fear engulfs us all that is who will buy our produce and give us assured MSP if government mandis are dismantled as these new acts may do so and replace it with new yards of private players,” he says.

Punjab has a well-oiled mandi system where 100% wheat and paddy produced by farmers are procured by state agencies on behalf of the central government.

Cotton is also procured at MSP by Cotton Corporation of India.

According to the centre’s last Agriculture Census report of 2015-16, the percentage of big farmers in Punjab is only 5%, which means that the present procurement system has benefited mostly small and marginal farmers, which according to census data account for a whopping 33.1% in the state having holdings below 2 hectares, while 33.6 percent are semi-medium (below 4 hectares) and remaining are medium landholding farmers.

In Haryana too, farmers are worried about the bills as the present procurement system is well established. In Haryana, 68.5 percent of holdings are of small, marginal and semi medium farmers.

Even though the centre has maintained that MSP will not be over under the new system, farmers say MSP alone is of no meaning if APMCs get dismantled.

Ram Singh, a farmer from Bhaini Bagha of Mansa district of Punjab, who owns just two acres (0.8 hectares) of farmland, says that the centre announces MSP for 23 crops every year. However, for crops where there is no assured government procurement even after the announcement of MSP, farmers have no option but to sell their produce in the open market at much lower prices.

“This year farmers in Punjab were forced to sell their maize crop below Rs. 1,200 per quintal despite the centre’s announcement of Rs. 1,860 per quintal as MSP just because there is no assured market for the crop. The same maize was then sold for Rs. 2,000-2,200 per quintal in the secondary market. Big firms are then selling maize flour for 100 per kg, burdening the common man. The same thing will happen with wheat and rice crops as well if these acts are implemented. Farmers will get less price while end consumers will as earlier pay more for our produce,” he says.

Rajinder Singh, Vice President of Kirti Kisan Union that represent mostly small and marginal farmers from Punjab and is actively participating in the Delhi protest, said that since the 90s, the globalisation, and nearly freezing of farmers’ income pushed thousands of farmers out of peasantry and made them bonded labourers.

He said this process is set to accelerate with neo-liberal policies of the central government that is now giving smooth entry of big corporates into agriculture fields and eying to end government mandis and MSP based assured income systems through new farm bills.

“This is the basic fear that has been driving all sections of the farmers towards this protest,” he said.

He said marginal and small farmers are more worried as they are at the bottom of rural economy and will be first to face the wrath of government’s move to corporatise agriculture.

Most of the protestors fear that the centre’s push to contract farming through one of the three bills would indirectly help corporates to take control of farm lands and make farmers bonded labourers in their own fields through loosely drafted acts that have provisions that help corporates rather than protect the interests of farmers.

52-year-old Kulwant Singh, a farmer from Kishangarh village in Mansa area, is a middle category farmer having close to four hectares of land. He says that if a farmer has a large land holding, expenses of farm machinery, tube-wells and tractors are equally higher.

“We are sitting at the Delhi border out of compulsion and fear how we will manage our expenses if our produce is not procured at MSP,” he said. “If that happens, we will be forced to leave farming which means that our land will eventually go,” he added.

Kulwant fears that the contract farming act was even more dangerous as it will make them labourers in their own fields.

“We had a lot of hopes when the present government said that they would double our incomes by 2022. Here, the government is trying to take away whatever income we earn,” he said.

RS Ghuman, professor of Economics at the Chandigarh based Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, said that if these laws were implemented, the small and marginal farmers would be losers on all counts-for marketing their produce and as contract farmers.

He says there is every likelihood that they may not get the contracted price on trivial grounds put forward by big private companies on quality issues even if there is no issue on this count. Farmers have very weak bargaining power against big companies, he said.

Last month, 10 prominent economists from different parts of the country wrote to the Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and stated that amending a few clauses in these acts, as the centre had proposed, would not be sufficient to address the concerns rightly raised by the farmers. Despite all such protests, the centre remains farm with its three laws and the agitation by the farmers intensifies. (The Leaflet — IPA Service)