INDIAN FARMERS PROTEST OVER PRO-BUSINESS AGRICULTURAL REFORMS

Protesting poor Indian farmers have argued that pro-market policies being implemented by the government will take away their bargaining power when selling their products to entrepreneurs, teleSUR reported.

Thousands of small farmers on Friday blocked roads and railways to protest against the new laws that will allow large companies to affect agricultural product prices and make working conditions more precarious. In the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, where most of the country's wheat is grown, farmers reject so-called "contract farming" and price deregulation. In addition, the new laws will allow large merchants to purchase agricultural products in quantities greater than those allowed in the state-owned wholesale markets called “Mandis.”

"Farmers, citizens, and students have joined the resistance to protest across India," former Communist Party (CPIM) lawmaker Hannan Mollah said. The government maintains that the changes will benefit farmers by allowing them to get better prices through a free-market economy. This supposed benefit, however, is questioned by farmers, who are part of one of the poorest and most oppressed social groups in India, a country where thousands of small producers commit suicide every year because they cannot pay their debts.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration defends the reforms arguing that they will increase private investment in the agricultural sector, which generates 15 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but opposition parties and social organizations, however, have strongly criticized these reforms because of their obvious consequences. "The peasants will be destroyed. We will not allow the government to turn the farmers into slaves of the corporate world," said Mollah.

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