Recently, the upper house of the Indian Parliament passed three bills despite furor from the opposition and farmers of the country. These bills which were introduced to make reforms in the agricultural sector have faced severe dissent and led to an outbreak of protests by farmers, especially in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Haryana.

The three bills namely,

1. Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020.

2. Farmers Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services (Empowerment and Protection) Bill, 2020.

3. Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020.

These bills provide farmers access to direct marketing mechanisms. The preamble of the bill states that its purpose is to create an ecosystem in which farmers enjoy the freedom of choice related to the sale and purchase of their produce. This enables the farmers to enter into farming agreements with any person, unlike earlier where the farmer sold produce to licensed middlemen authorized by the Agricultural Produce Market Committees.

• FARMERS PRODUCE TRADE AND COMMERCE (PROMOTION AND FACILITATION) BILL, 2020.

This bill provides free market access to farmers, it enables them to sell anywhere within the country, not just APMC approved market places as mentioned above. It also facilitates them with better transport and interstate trade without any middlemen. Previously, the agricultural market had licensed middlemen who would purchase farmer’s produce at auction price and sell it to retailers and traders. Under this new law, the farmers are able to eliminate this process and sell directly to these retailers and traders. This bill also provides for setting up of a dispute resolution mechanism operated by a sub-divisional magistrate. Although it seems beneficial, farmers are against this as they don’t have sufficient resources to meet the expectations of large corporates to whom they will be exposed to, due to this bill. This may only prove beneficial to large scale farmers and not small or marginal farmers and they are apprehensive about being unable to acquire the Minimum Support Price (MSP) promised by the government. Farmers with geographical constraints will have a relatively smaller market place as compared to earlier and may not be able to attain good prices.

• FARMERS AGREEMENT OF PRICE ASSURANCE AND FARM SERVICES (EMPOWERMENT AND PROTECTION) BILL, 2020.

This bill allows farmers to negotiate contracts with buyers. Agreements can be entered into with any potential buyer and terms such as price of produce, standard and other issues can be decided and agreed upon beforehand. This also enables farmers to get an assured price for their produce. Contract farming provides a lot of benefits, as large corporations prefer to be in direct contact with the farmers in order to get quality products, while having their special requirements regarding the production and quality of the produce, met. A potential downside to this is that there are high chances of exploitation of marginal and small farmers by these large corporations.

• ESSENTIAL COMMODITIES (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2020.

This Act was first introduced in 1955, aiming to control the production, supply, and distribution of certain essential commodities. It does away with stock holding limits on essential commodities to protect from seasonal demand fluctuation.

The perception of these bills has not been overwhelmingly positive, stakeholders are split. The manner in which these bills were passed despite extreme opposition has seemed to shock people. The opinions of the opposition and the voice of the suffering farmers were not heard. The provisions of these bills need to be communicated properly and the worries of the farmers need to be addressed in order to calm their unrest and agitation against this bill. Soon, time will tell whether these bills are for better or for worse.

This article does not intend to hurt the sentiments of any individual, community, sect, or religion, etcetera. This article is based purely on the author’s personal opinion and views in the exercise of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed under Article 19(1)(A) and other related laws being enforced in India for the time being.