The dust is settling down since the withdrawal of the protesters  from the Delhi borders against the three farm laws – Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act; Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm services Act and Essential Commodities(Amendment) Act. It is the opportune time for a thorough scanning and debating the utility or futility of agricultural reforms with an eye on the farm stress, squeezing incomes and large scale economic disparities, particularly of the vast majority of kisans standing in the last in the queue to somehow hang on to catch the development train, in a comparatively calm environment.

There is no denying the fact that the farmers enjoy a high political, socio-cultural and emotional value in the context of increasing fragmentation of the society and politics. Agri-reforms are hard to be deferred also because the speed of India’s social, economic, cultural and urban development will continue to be obstructed by the uneven growth of the rural and urban sectors.

How to go about it? There are two pathways – the old and the modern which can also be termed as status quoits and the reformist revolutionary respectively. The first approach is guided and nurtured by the demands for farm subsidies, loan waivers, free water and electricity, MSP etc. raised, supported and fought for periodically by the farmers sitting at the apex of the vertical hierarchy of kisans  quite often called kulaks, rich farmers, or the tractor lobby that immensely benefitted from the green revolution. Surprisingly, the whole political class sitting on the opposition benches including the leftists sided with these agriculture oligarchs, leaving aside the cause of the millions of the small and marginal farmers waiting for some change in their living conditions- social and economic- even after decades of independence, who continue to suffer the lack of reach to the advantages of development.

 The policies framed for the development of the agrarian sector in independent India were based on patchwork approach and served the interests of the ones enjoying political clout and owning most of the means of production and distribution. The political class developed a vested interest in keeping the rich farmers lobby happy and satisfied and holding hope to the deprived or the weak of the village. In the process the neo-rich kulaks have always succeeded in thwarting the efforts of the political regimes after independence at doing anything favourable to the exploited weaker kisans.

The land reform Acts, for example, passed in the 1950s and 60s failed to provide significant tangible benefits to them as the rich farmers and the political elites colluded, in most cases, to manipulate the process. The other example of deliberate relegation of the small and marginal groups of farmers to the background can be taken from the late 1960s and early seventies when the same kulaks were mobilized into kisan movements around the castes aiming at the enhancement of their political, economic and social power zone by leaders like Chaudhary Charan Singh in Western UP and the like ones in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The recent Kisan agitation for about a year was also no different from the perspectives of demands, focus or the locus specially when one notes that the epicenter of protests was again the geography under the grip of green revolution. It were the middle caste neo-rich peasantry of the 60s to 70s that again became the vanguard of protests and the vast majority again remained onlookers at the margins.

The Sanyukta Kisan Morcha, a conglomeration of dozens of small and big kisan unions, most of them having the past political affiliations as well adopted mobilization strategies for a long sustained agitation for the withdrawal of the three farm laws, meant to benefit all sections of the farming community including the poorer kisans. The tactics included an alliance formation beyond the ideological confines between the kisan organizations,  seeking behind the scene alliance of the opposition parties to extend all possible support to the movement, realised the government’s hesitation to take any coercive punitive legal action against the agitators, seeking and receiving financial help from outside the country to save the protesters from the hardships of the movement, and give them luxurious living on the roads so as to protect the participants against the agitation fatigue, welcoming secretively and cunningly the anti social elements, creation and spreading of fears, misinformation and disinformation about the impact of the farm laws on the ownership rights of land etc.

The impending elections in the five states of U P, Punjab, Goa, Uttrakhand and Manipur further closed options and proved prohibitive of choices before the government. The result is before us all to see. The agricultural reform approach, implicit in the agriculture reform Acts, aims at revolutionizing rural development theory and practice. It involves structural, technical, cultural and mental revolution to usher in redistribution of resources and impressive and effective increase in incomes. The strategy presupposes unshackling the so far neglected marginalized majority of the poor kisans from the vertical hierarchical structure so as to establish horizontal hierarchies- social and economic.

The approach is based on the inclusive model of agricultural development and change.  The exclusivist and dominant power relations in the agriculture sector, in this strategy, are taken as the main hurdles in the way of achieving sustainable agriculture and in the road to the sustainable goal achievement. The agricultural professionals and experts, technocrats and the liberal modern agriculture theorists argue that the reformist approach is the only option to link Indian agri-sector to the global competitive production and market system so as to be able to sell and purchase the products both locally and globally.

This situation will create a farming community that is more confident, self-reliant and more empowered. The farmers need to come out of the old conservative thought net to move with the changing times. They should think and act big to help themselves to grow rich or at least break the poverty chain. The supporters of the reformist farm laws see the hope of seeing light at the end of the dark tunnel to find and use alternatives to get adequate returns of their produce; to engage in the beneficial trade and commerce and make the best use of those farm units (land Holdings) that are not so viable because of reduction in size etc.

It shall be a self injurious and self defeating exercise for India and her farmers to delay agricultural reforms anymore. it is imperative that their type, quantum and shape is analysed completely and comprehensively at different levels - the agriculture research institutions, Stake holders and their professional affiliates, academics in the universities and colleges, civil society institutions operating at the ground level, professionals and experts, politicians of different hues, trade and commerce companies, the industry and the farmers - in the most dispassionate manner. New age agriculture for a new age India is the need that cannot be allowed to remain unsaturated.

(The author is former Fellow, IIAS, Shimla)