Agriculture in India : News, Updates, Discussion & Analysis

It’s like fear of getting out of jail. Who’s gonna give me food, how will I survive. Someone will rob me

He doesn't realise that it's no longer about raising the MSP, but it's about raising the yield to compensate for the unaffordable MSP. And only the private sector has the ability to bring the technology needed to raise the yield.
 
What @Maler and Punjabi farmers are experiencing is called Stockholm Syndrome. They are so used to being taken for a ride that they think this is normal and would even protect those who are actually harming them.
Even the so called farmers of Punjab who are agitating are mostly Jatt sikhs. Punjab has the largest Dalit Population in India of over 32% and those are marginalised farmers of Punjab. They are not part of this agitation.
 

Punjab: Harvesting a Protest​

If there is trouble from a resurgent Khalistani politics, it is unlikely to follow the roadmap of the 1980s. Siddharth Singh travels across Punjab to find out what has changed
Siddharth Singh | 12 Mar, 2021
HarvestingProtest1.jpg

A portrait of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale at the Damdami Taksal seminary in Mehta Chowk near Amritsar

AT THE SOUTHERN edge of the Shakargarh Bulge, an area of Pakistan that abuts Indian territory, lies a stretch of land across the river Ravi. Surrounded on three sides by Pakistan and with Ravi to its back, this is the ideal territory for a smuggler or, of late, for someone trying to send weapons across to India. With a meandering river, grasslands, open spaces and a geographically difficult area to access, this is a sensitive zone.
“We have devoted considerable manpower to keep an eye on this region and are effectively the second line of defence for the country. But once in a while someone does manage to sneak in weapons and drugs,” says Gurpreet Singh Gill, the senior superintendent of police (headquarters) for the Batala police district in north Punjab. “The number of policemen in that area may number just 200 but that area occupies more than a third of our mind,” he says, emphasising the problem for the local police.
Gill is not alone in worrying about the problem of drones being used to smuggle weapons into India via Punjab, a state that has seen its farmers camp on the outskirts of Delhi in a protest that has lasted more than four months. On different occasions, Amarinder Singh, the chief minister of Punjab, has said that a “lot of weapons” have been sent to Punjab. He said that the Union home ministry has been apprised of the situation. What many observers, in Punjab and elsewhere, fear is the abuse of the protest for separatist and political motives. The extensive foreign support—for example from Canada and Britain, where the ‘issue’ was debated in Parliament recently—has had an effect on the dynamics of the protest. There is now, clearly, a pro-Khalistani faction within the ranks of the protestors even if the ground in Punjab is not ready for another misadventure of the kind seen in the 1980s. It is a testing time for Punjab.
In a village not far from Phagwara town, a key activist of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, the apex body of protesting farmer unions, gives Open a very different account of the proceedings in that body—different from headlines about an obdurate Government not listening to farmers. He also hinted at a disturbing change in farmers’ politics in recent months.
“There have been feelers from the Government that they are willing to extend the period of suspension of the three laws further and, if we negotiate, this can even go up to three years. But this is very unlikely,” he says while requesting anonymity. “Originally, it was difficult to get a coordinated response as there were 30-40 jathe bandis (different groups), each with its own followers. The noise and cacophony made agreement tough.” The situation is now different. There are some groups which understand that this protest cannot go on for a long time but they are prisoners of their original stand: where they were unbending to begin with, now they find it hard to explain to their followers why a compromise is necessary.
If this is one dynamic within the Morcha, the other—more disturbing—aspect is the tussle between Khalistani-oriented and Left-backed unions. When questioned if the Khalistani influence was for real, the activist responded in the affirmative.
HarvestingProtest2.jpg
A CRPF drill in Chandigarh, March 5 (Photo: Getty Images)
“The issue is not just one of money but of a vast number of social media supporters for that kind of politics. Do you see anyone talking just in terms of farmers’ issues without divisive politics?” the activist—who comes from a well-known village of Ghadar Party pioneers—asked. The Jalandhar division of Punjab was home to the Ghadar activists who resisted the British Raj much before the freedom struggle was waged in a systematic manner.
“The best example of this situation is Balbir Singh Rajewal (leader of a Bharatiya Kisan Union). He knows that some flexibility is necessary but when he is confronted with these two very different pressures, he goes ahead with the Left unions,” he says.
The activist is critical of the so-called leaders whom he describes as “failed politicians” who had tried their luck at electoral politics and had not succeeded. “A leader is able to take bold decisions and face his followers, however difficult that may be. These union leaders first gathered their followers and gave commands; now they are prisoners of their followers. If they agree with the Government, they fear accusations of selling-out.”
An impasse stares at the protest that began in November 2020. At the apex of the protest organisation, some leaders are willing to come to terms with the Government even as Left and Khalistani unions jostle each other for influence. At the bottom, a large number of farmers are despondent and don’t see a way out. They would like to leave. “They would have left were it not for the mattas(resolutions) passed by their village panchayats pledging support to the protest. The villages only have a sketchy idea of what is going on in Delhi.”
The idea is simple: Don’t talk about Khalistan but let it brew quietly. Police say places where religious awareness is high and understanding of political processes is poor are likely spots for trouble
I ask the activist why he is going back to the protest site if such is the situation. (He had briefly returned home for some work). “We are against the three laws; we are not against the country. If I leave and come back, that will mean one less person to confront the radicals.”
BATALA, A TOWN IN Gurdaspur district that is half-way between Amritsar and the district headquarters, is in many ways a typical Punjab town. Local industry centred around agriculture and trading mixes with something more interesting, politically speaking. The town is also at the crossroads of a region of Punjab that has seen a mix of religious piety and political mobilisation, leading to an outcome from which the state suffered for nearly two decades. Damdami Taksal, a religious seminary with a troubled past, and Sri Hargobindpur, another town with a history of terrorist violence, are not far off. In all, Batala is an interesting place to observe.
Tucked in a corner of Zaffarwal village, just off the highway from Batala to Gurdaspur, is a cluster of nondescript houses. But the person who lives there—locally known as the “German returned”—is anything but ordinary. From the early 1980s and well into the 1990s, Wassan Singh Zaffarwal spelled terror not just in Punjab but in neighbouring states as well. Today, many years after his ‘surrender’, the former chief of the dreaded Khalistan Commando Force sports the honorific Bhai as a prefix, a title normally reserved for religious and community leaders. Age and his years on the run have not affected him adversely. When Open catches up with him at his ‘dera’ in Zaffarwal, he is equanimity itself.
“If at all there is turmoil in Punjab, it will not take the form it did before,” he says while comparing the present with the earlier separatist insurgency. “We should support farmers and we should follow the programme set by farmers’ unions. This is not a movement for Khalistan. We should not go on that path,” he tells Openwhen questioned about the political moorings of the farmers’ agitation.
HarvestingProtest3.jpg
A Punjab Police patrol in Amritsar (Photo: Alamy)
It is a crafty answer coming from a man who has not stopped dabbling in identity politics since his return to India. It makes sense for him to deny any scope for Sikh separatism, knowing well that such sentiment exists on the ground and is very much represented in the farmers’ agitation. To another question on the reasons for the failure of separatists to gain Khalistan, Zaffarwal gives an interesting answer: “Worldwide, freedom struggles have only succeeded when armed action is backed by a political party that represents the voice of the people. In Punjab, all we had were corrupt and opportunistic politicians and not a party that gave voice to independence.” In the worldview of people like Zaffarwal, the farmers’ agitation is something that will lead to the same kind of politics that led to turmoil in Punjab, if it is steered deftly. The idea is simple: don’t talk about Khalistan but let it brew quietly at the forum where it is strong.
If Zaffarwal’s arguments have a chess-like quality, the family of a political activist who resisted terrorism and continues to pay a price for its ideals, has a totally different perspective. “How can anyone deny the presence of Khalistani terrorists in Punjab today?” asks Jagdish Kaur, wife of Balwinder Singh Sandhu, a Shaurya Chakra winner who was gunned down last October at the school run by his family.
The danger is not from an organised Khalistani party backed with money from abroad but from an unpredictable chain of events. Local police are wary of the events in Singhu and elsewhere
Sandhu, a Left activist well-known for resisting terrorists in the Bhikhiwind area of Amritsar, the hotbed of insurgency in the 1990s, was killed by two motorcycle-borne men on October 16th last year just a week after his family had urged the state government to restore his security detail. The police protection given to Sandhu was withdrawn in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The case is controversial, with the local police also investigating an alleged angle of personal rivalry. The family, however, denies this.
More important is the political perspective that lies behind the family’s fears. For example, what makes it think that Khalistani activists, if not terrorists, are back in Punjab? “If you care to look at the events of the last year, such as the planting of the Khalistani flag at the deputy commissioner’s office in Moga, the pasting of Khalistani posters in Batala town and other such incidents, they clearly indicated to us that this (Khalistani agitation) was not over. We knew we could become targets and we did,” Kaur tells Open at her home, located within the school compound in Bhikhiwind town of Tarn Taran district.
It is futile to look for a median perspective among the devious answers of a terrorist, a scared and inconsolable family, obdurate farmers and a harried district police force. A median is also useless analytically: any insurgency may have tell-tale signs before it bursts into the open, but one cannot simply make observations that say “X will lead to Y.” The tell-tale signs are all there: the posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale; the mix of farmers’ protest with religious motifs on the roads of Batala; the songs praying for religious intercession against the Union Government at a chabeel—a wayside offering of cool water by the devout—on the way to Dera Baba Nanak. The trouble is that if you are from Punjab, you can dismiss these as ‘normal’ things. But if one is from Punjab and keeps its history of troubled times in mind, perhaps some extra attention is also normal.
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A tractor rally against the farm laws in Chandigarh, January 23 (Photo: Getty Images)
Yet, one can safely say that if there is an answer to what is going on and what could unfold, the closest one can get is what officers of Batala police say. But in one sense, what Zaffarwal says is true: this time, if there is trouble, the form taken will be very different from what was seen in the 1980s.
Back then, it was political competition between the two political parties of the state—Congress and the Akali Dal—that went on a ruinous path. Punjab was suffused with religiosity that provided the inflammable material necessary for an insurgency.
The better-off Jat Sikh farmers thought that a political adventure could yield benefits for them. But that was then. Today, the cannon fodder is different: a large and young population that has few economic prospects. In that context, the northern districts (the old Amritsar district along with Gurdaspur) are a cause for concern as they have a history of religion-based mobilisation.
The tell-tale signs are all there: The posters of Bhindranwale; the mix of farmers’ protest with religious motifs; the songs praying for religious intercession against the union government. The trouble is that if you are from Punjab, you can dismiss these as ‘normal’ things
Local police officers are wary of the events in Singhu and elsewhere. “There won’t be terrorism of the kind that was seen last time but what will happen is that gangsters like Lakha Sidhana will be used to create trouble here (in Batala). Religion always comes in handy,” says a superintendent of police. When asked about the possible problem of youth mobilisation—and why this is a problem now since the youth bulge was always an issue—the officer says, “Earlier, drug use was rampant and a way out of a dim existence with no prospects. Now things have changed. Today, if you want to mobilise a large number, all you have to do is give a charged speech.”
“The josh in the agitation fell a bit after January 26th but is now rising once again. The next six months will be critical as elections are nearing and that is the time when the potential for some misadventure will be high,” he adds.
Are there specific places where things can get out of hand? Here, police officers shy away from citing particular examples but say that those places where religious awareness is high and understanding of political processes is poor are likely spots for trouble. Giving names is invidious but anyone who has observed this part of Punjab knows that there are many such places. The Mehta-Sri Hargobindpur stretch, the area adjoining Dera Baba Nanak, comes to mind immediately. But it will be unfair to single out these places. There are others as well.
Nearly everyone Open talks to agrees that the farmers’ agitation should not be allowed to carry on any further. In Delhi, Surinder Jodhka, a long-time observer of Punjab politics who has written about the politics of Khalistan, downplays immediate threats but says, “The longer the farmers’ agitation goes on, the more chances it will give to elements who are fishing for trouble. Whatever be the mechanics of getting to a solution, efforts should be made to end it quickly.” The danger is not from an organised Khalistani party backed with money from abroad but from an unpredictable chain of events that no one can anticipate.
This, however, is easier said than done. As the Samyukt Kisan Morcha activist says, the agitation is no longer about farmers’ interests and has now acquired a different political dynamic. Publicly, in terms of what activists, intellectuals and others say, the debate remains centred on farmers’ livelihoods. But in reality the inability to reach a solution with the Government—in fact, an unwillingness to do so—points to a disturbing direction of politics. Anyone who has observed Punjab’s politics and those tasked with keeping the state in order know this is a disquieting moment. To view the agitation as a battle of attrition will be a mistake.

 
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Because all jatts are farmers but its not true for other castes. So, if they are doing farming for so many decades,dont you think their land size will increase only?
Nobody is blaming the Jutt Sikhs or begrudging them their successes. It's just the age old problem - power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Jutt Sikh lobby has enjoyed uninterrupted & overwhelming power on a/c of the control it exercises over it's religion & the fact that they're landowners & very prosperous at that too. It's because of this that they believe they're entitled to a lot of privileges - a case in point being the MSP .

It's the same story of any dominant caste in any state of the country. Like with Jats in Haryana, the UC in UP, Bihar, MP & Rajasthan. The Patels in Gujarat, the Marathas in Maharashtra. Except in all these states over the past 7 decades since Independence, we've seen alternate caste groupings formed usually from the underprivileged sections of society thus effecting a transfer of power. This has happened all over the country without any exception except Punjab where whether the Akalis win or the Congress the lobby which rules have ways been the Jutt Sikhs & their cohorts which in this case can be the arthiyas & other such castes in the supporting roles in the ecosystem.

A peculiar set of circumstances led to the Green Revolution being introduced in undivided Punjab which reaped the benefits of it alongside Haryana & Western UP to a large extent. A peculiar set of circumstances continued to see a lop sided procurement policy by the central govt thru FCI with the former 2 states comprising of up to 80% of the total national procurement of cereals at the cost of the rest of the nation.

Among them was poor infrastructure by way of storage, markets, financial system etc in the rest of the country.It's also rumoured that one of the reasons the central government didn't change it's procurement policies from 2000 onwards was to aid the economic re development & reconstruction of the Punjab after the nearly 2 decades of terrorism & it's aftermath.

Ideally both the state & the agricultural sector should have sat together & planned a road map for the next two decades with an emphasis on diversification, new agricultural technology to enhance productivity, exports etc.

The state should have also actively pursued industrialization. None of which happened & people were satisfied with the status quo. The true beneficiaries of the MSP should have ideally been the small farmer either from these 2 states & from the rest of the country. Ironically the biggest beneficiaries turned out to be the most prosperous farmers & the eco system built on that prosperity to perpetuate this legacy.

From the time of the ABV government, it was known that the present lopsided system of both the MSP & the kind of procurement FCI indulged in was economically untenable & the market would have to be Liberalised by bringing in pvt players. The state government too was aware of the this distortion at the heart of it but as usual everybody kicks the can down the road & nobody does anything here unless we're neck deep in water & sinking. That's how the 1991 liberalisation came about & here we are 3 decades later in 2021.

Lol So u r saying its only the jatt Sikhs targetting Hinduism, not other caste or religion.
Are you actually so naive as to be totally unaware of what was happening once the farmers agitation shifted to the outskirts of Delhi ? Hasn't the agitation been infiltrated by 5th columnists be they Khalistani elements or other similar groups? Weren't the events of 26th January ample proof that there was a deliberate attempt to provoke the GoI into intemperate action so that a crisis was precipitated which having failed has now led to a recalibation of tactics. Haven't other members explicitly named & quoted people making such hate speeches & comments.


The best part is & this has been pointed out innumerable times before that all the players in this agitation from the BKU ( that's what Rakesh Tikait was demanding till around July 2020 last year before he changed his tune. That's what his father Mahendra Singh Tikait spent his life fighting for) to the other farmers unions to the SAD or even the Congress & Capt Amarinder Singh himself had at various times in the past called for liberalization & privatization of the mandi system. Contract farming has been introduced much before these farm laws came into effect into the Punjab. Yet once these laws were passed all hell broke loose. I'd really want some good investigative journalist to get to the bottom of this whole affair. The fact that state elections are next year should explain a great deal of the political opportunism on display.

You should read the post #303. It quotes about excellent article giving one a sense of what's the issue all about & where is Punjab headed.
Lol for many years, we have Hindu CMs also, and Zail singh is not only non Jatt CM and SAD is a family party. You should search more.
I think you ought to re read what I wrote. I wrote ever since the reorganization of the state of Punjab in 1966 following the Punjab Suba movement ie it's partition into 3 states of HP, Haryana & Punjab you've not had a single non Sikh & a single non JuttSikh save Zail Singh as CM that too from 1972-77.

You could easily do this too but here goes. . Please identify a single non Sikh or a non Jutt Sikh since 1966 . I'm sure you can do so by their surname. Oh & mind you! In spite of Sikhs comprising around 2% of the population we've had 1 Sikh president & a Sikh PM for 2 terms. I can't imagine Punjab ever electing a Hindu CM or even a Mazhabi Sikh as a CM in the distant future. The SAD has turned into a Badal party Only in the last 2 - 2.5 decades.



You ought to read more on how the SAD under Longowal made Zail Singh's life miserable by playing classic power politics using blackmail in introducing the Anandpur Sahib Resolution with it's list of demands which could only be described as quasi seccesionist.



Although much of the provisions of the ASR found it's way into the Rajiv Longowal Punjab Accord, nearly half of them weren't implemented as this could have led to a direct impingement on the rights of Haryana.

So, remember if you think this is a universal farmers agitation because the Haryana farmers mostly Hindu Jats are either you, think again. They're quite wary of any overwhelming support as they know how things panned out the last time. Plus all those intemperate utterances & occurrences of 26th Jan by elements from your community didn't help matters. There exists as of now deep fault lines between Haryana & Punjab. While you may not be aware of it, your people are & so are the Haryanvis.

And by religion, I think you are talking about SGPC. Just search more and u will find its Khatri sikhs who was dominating SGPC untill SAD.

I'm again referring to the scenario since 1966 ever since the creation of an exclusive Punjab state. Pls note that you've never had a non Jutt as an Akal Takht Jathedar too. Look it up.
 
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Oh Tattamasi, I might classify myself as Sikh culturally but I am not into religion.
Oh then who dragged it into this discussion by name-calling?

So PM Modi is telling lies, because he said in parliament that APMC Mandis are going nowhere and MSP will also stay!
He stating fact according to the words from the bill.

Bill is not saying it will go but when a system enters market-based economics, everything is about efficiency and supply-demand. When there is no use for such mandi's why would they exist?

Can you explain, how private mandis will be more efficient than APMC Mandis and beneficial for farmers? And there will be no exploitation of farmers?
Same answer, When there can be as many ways to reach for the farmer to the buyer. From the seller's point of view (Farmer), the Most frictionless, most profit-making system wins.

There won't be a single private entity that you can sell to. There will be multiple options. Thus competition between them to attract the best quality produce. Competition increases efficiency. That is the beauty of a market-based system. Everybody wins.

Think about milk, there are so many multi-nationals (Hatsun, nestle), domestic private sector, and co-operatives. Did someone take over and monopolies? All farmers there are small with average 2-3 cows. Why are they earning so much and producing value?

If there is "exploitation" then cant he theoretically go back to govt mandis?. Let me ask this again if APMC mandi's are so efficient as you claim then why do you care about the competition?

Maharashtra deregulated APMC not long back, Regular mandi's are still doing well (for now). Farmer's did not switch that fast.


Tatte, its already 15 years since APMC Mandis were abolished and private mandis implemented in Bihar. So what is the income level of Bihari farmers now? They must lead the country by example! I hope there income must be increased manifolds than saturated income states of Punjab/Haryana with inefficient mandis!!! Again, what is there income level?
Bihar performed far better than the national average in the last decade. No single state can do it by themself. They have the worst infrastructure and investment from the private sector. The governance is bad. Punjab has none of the problems. BIMARU states are a bad comparison. They get one-third of the subsidy, one-third of land while multiple times the population.

Why don't you read about Maharashtra where is healthy competition?

But there are people like Sanghmittra @AbRaj spreading lies here that Bihari farmers selling paddy at around Rs.800-Rs.900 per quintal to middleman and middleman selling same produce in Punjab/Haryana APMC Mandis at MSP! Lier........Now throw I-Form of Bihari farmers, who sold there paddy at Rs.2500 per quintal to Ambanis, Adanis.....etc..etc. on his face!!!
Before you call someone lier. Show me the proof for your claims about contract farming. This is the third time I'm asking.

Have some integrity.

What is the difference of poverty in both countries? Plz elaborate!
Because the definition of poverty is dramatically different from ours. If we follow their definition we will have more people in "poor" bracket than their entire population. We have an "extremely poor" bracket which is ~5% of the population which don't exist in the west.
 

Punjab: Harvesting a Protest​

If there is trouble from a resurgent Khalistani politics, it is unlikely to follow the roadmap of the 1980s. Siddharth Singh travels across Punjab to find out what has changed
Siddharth Singh | 12 Mar, 2021
HarvestingProtest1.jpg

A portrait of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale at the Damdami Taksal seminary in Mehta Chowk near Amritsar

AT THE SOUTHERN edge of the Shakargarh Bulge, an area of Pakistan that abuts Indian territory, lies a stretch of land across the river Ravi. Surrounded on three sides by Pakistan and with Ravi to its back, this is the ideal territory for a smuggler or, of late, for someone trying to send weapons across to India. With a meandering river, grasslands, open spaces and a geographically difficult area to access, this is a sensitive zone.
“We have devoted considerable manpower to keep an eye on this region and are effectively the second line of defence for the country. But once in a while someone does manage to sneak in weapons and drugs,” says Gurpreet Singh Gill, the senior superintendent of police (headquarters) for the Batala police district in north Punjab. “The number of policemen in that area may number just 200 but that area occupies more than a third of our mind,” he says, emphasising the problem for the local police.
Gill is not alone in worrying about the problem of drones being used to smuggle weapons into India via Punjab, a state that has seen its farmers camp on the outskirts of Delhi in a protest that has lasted more than four months. On different occasions, Amarinder Singh, the chief minister of Punjab, has said that a “lot of weapons” have been sent to Punjab. He said that the Union home ministry has been apprised of the situation. What many observers, in Punjab and elsewhere, fear is the abuse of the protest for separatist and political motives. The extensive foreign support—for example from Canada and Britain, where the ‘issue’ was debated in Parliament recently—has had an effect on the dynamics of the protest. There is now, clearly, a pro-Khalistani faction within the ranks of the protestors even if the ground in Punjab is not ready for another misadventure of the kind seen in the 1980s. It is a testing time for Punjab.
In a village not far from Phagwara town, a key activist of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, the apex body of protesting farmer unions, gives Open a very different account of the proceedings in that body—different from headlines about an obdurate Government not listening to farmers. He also hinted at a disturbing change in farmers’ politics in recent months.
“There have been feelers from the Government that they are willing to extend the period of suspension of the three laws further and, if we negotiate, this can even go up to three years. But this is very unlikely,” he says while requesting anonymity. “Originally, it was difficult to get a coordinated response as there were 30-40 jathe bandis (different groups), each with its own followers. The noise and cacophony made agreement tough.” The situation is now different. There are some groups which understand that this protest cannot go on for a long time but they are prisoners of their original stand: where they were unbending to begin with, now they find it hard to explain to their followers why a compromise is necessary.
If this is one dynamic within the Morcha, the other—more disturbing—aspect is the tussle between Khalistani-oriented and Left-backed unions. When questioned if the Khalistani influence was for real, the activist responded in the affirmative.
HarvestingProtest2.jpg
A CRPF drill in Chandigarh, March 5 (Photo: Getty Images)
“The issue is not just one of money but of a vast number of social media supporters for that kind of politics. Do you see anyone talking just in terms of farmers’ issues without divisive politics?” the activist—who comes from a well-known village of Ghadar Party pioneers—asked. The Jalandhar division of Punjab was home to the Ghadar activists who resisted the British Raj much before the freedom struggle was waged in a systematic manner.
“The best example of this situation is Balbir Singh Rajewal (leader of a Bharatiya Kisan Union). He knows that some flexibility is necessary but when he is confronted with these two very different pressures, he goes ahead with the Left unions,” he says.
The activist is critical of the so-called leaders whom he describes as “failed politicians” who had tried their luck at electoral politics and had not succeeded. “A leader is able to take bold decisions and face his followers, however difficult that may be. These union leaders first gathered their followers and gave commands; now they are prisoners of their followers. If they agree with the Government, they fear accusations of selling-out.”
An impasse stares at the protest that began in November 2020. At the apex of the protest organisation, some leaders are willing to come to terms with the Government even as Left and Khalistani unions jostle each other for influence. At the bottom, a large number of farmers are despondent and don’t see a way out. They would like to leave. “They would have left were it not for the mattas(resolutions) passed by their village panchayats pledging support to the protest. The villages only have a sketchy idea of what is going on in Delhi.”

I ask the activist why he is going back to the protest site if such is the situation. (He had briefly returned home for some work). “We are against the three laws; we are not against the country. If I leave and come back, that will mean one less person to confront the radicals.”
BATALA, A TOWN IN Gurdaspur district that is half-way between Amritsar and the district headquarters, is in many ways a typical Punjab town. Local industry centred around agriculture and trading mixes with something more interesting, politically speaking. The town is also at the crossroads of a region of Punjab that has seen a mix of religious piety and political mobilisation, leading to an outcome from which the state suffered for nearly two decades. Damdami Taksal, a religious seminary with a troubled past, and Sri Hargobindpur, another town with a history of terrorist violence, are not far off. In all, Batala is an interesting place to observe.
Tucked in a corner of Zaffarwal village, just off the highway from Batala to Gurdaspur, is a cluster of nondescript houses. But the person who lives there—locally known as the “German returned”—is anything but ordinary. From the early 1980s and well into the 1990s, Wassan Singh Zaffarwal spelled terror not just in Punjab but in neighbouring states as well. Today, many years after his ‘surrender’, the former chief of the dreaded Khalistan Commando Force sports the honorific Bhai as a prefix, a title normally reserved for religious and community leaders. Age and his years on the run have not affected him adversely. When Open catches up with him at his ‘dera’ in Zaffarwal, he is equanimity itself.
“If at all there is turmoil in Punjab, it will not take the form it did before,” he says while comparing the present with the earlier separatist insurgency. “We should support farmers and we should follow the programme set by farmers’ unions. This is not a movement for Khalistan. We should not go on that path,” he tells Openwhen questioned about the political moorings of the farmers’ agitation.
HarvestingProtest3.jpg
A Punjab Police patrol in Amritsar (Photo: Alamy)
It is a crafty answer coming from a man who has not stopped dabbling in identity politics since his return to India. It makes sense for him to deny any scope for Sikh separatism, knowing well that such sentiment exists on the ground and is very much represented in the farmers’ agitation. To another question on the reasons for the failure of separatists to gain Khalistan, Zaffarwal gives an interesting answer: “Worldwide, freedom struggles have only succeeded when armed action is backed by a political party that represents the voice of the people. In Punjab, all we had were corrupt and opportunistic politicians and not a party that gave voice to independence.” In the worldview of people like Zaffarwal, the farmers’ agitation is something that will lead to the same kind of politics that led to turmoil in Punjab, if it is steered deftly. The idea is simple: don’t talk about Khalistan but let it brew quietly at the forum where it is strong.
If Zaffarwal’s arguments have a chess-like quality, the family of a political activist who resisted terrorism and continues to pay a price for its ideals, has a totally different perspective. “How can anyone deny the presence of Khalistani terrorists in Punjab today?” asks Jagdish Kaur, wife of Balwinder Singh Sandhu, a Shaurya Chakra winner who was gunned down last October at the school run by his family.

Sandhu, a Left activist well-known for resisting terrorists in the Bhikhiwind area of Amritsar, the hotbed of insurgency in the 1990s, was killed by two motorcycle-borne men on October 16th last year just a week after his family had urged the state government to restore his security detail. The police protection given to Sandhu was withdrawn in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The case is controversial, with the local police also investigating an alleged angle of personal rivalry. The family, however, denies this.
More important is the political perspective that lies behind the family’s fears. For example, what makes it think that Khalistani activists, if not terrorists, are back in Punjab? “If you care to look at the events of the last year, such as the planting of the Khalistani flag at the deputy commissioner’s office in Moga, the pasting of Khalistani posters in Batala town and other such incidents, they clearly indicated to us that this (Khalistani agitation) was not over. We knew we could become targets and we did,” Kaur tells Open at her home, located within the school compound in Bhikhiwind town of Tarn Taran district.
It is futile to look for a median perspective among the devious answers of a terrorist, a scared and inconsolable family, obdurate farmers and a harried district police force. A median is also useless analytically: any insurgency may have tell-tale signs before it bursts into the open, but one cannot simply make observations that say “X will lead to Y.” The tell-tale signs are all there: the posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale; the mix of farmers’ protest with religious motifs on the roads of Batala; the songs praying for religious intercession against the Union Government at a chabeel—a wayside offering of cool water by the devout—on the way to Dera Baba Nanak. The trouble is that if you are from Punjab, you can dismiss these as ‘normal’ things. But if one is from Punjab and keeps its history of troubled times in mind, perhaps some extra attention is also normal.
HarvestingProtest4.jpg
A tractor rally against the farm laws in Chandigarh, January 23 (Photo: Getty Images)
Yet, one can safely say that if there is an answer to what is going on and what could unfold, the closest one can get is what officers of Batala police say. But in one sense, what Zaffarwal says is true: this time, if there is trouble, the form taken will be very different from what was seen in the 1980s.
Back then, it was political competition between the two political parties of the state—Congress and the Akali Dal—that went on a ruinous path. Punjab was suffused with religiosity that provided the inflammable material necessary for an insurgency.
The better-off Jat Sikh farmers thought that a political adventure could yield benefits for them. But that was then. Today, the cannon fodder is different: a large and young population that has few economic prospects. In that context, the northern districts (the old Amritsar district along with Gurdaspur) are a cause for concern as they have a history of religion-based mobilisation.

Local police officers are wary of the events in Singhu and elsewhere. “There won’t be terrorism of the kind that was seen last time but what will happen is that gangsters like Lakha Sidhana will be used to create trouble here (in Batala). Religion always comes in handy,” says a superintendent of police. When asked about the possible problem of youth mobilisation—and why this is a problem now since the youth bulge was always an issue—the officer says, “Earlier, drug use was rampant and a way out of a dim existence with no prospects. Now things have changed. Today, if you want to mobilise a large number, all you have to do is give a charged speech.”
“The josh in the agitation fell a bit after January 26th but is now rising once again. The next six months will be critical as elections are nearing and that is the time when the potential for some misadventure will be high,” he adds.
Are there specific places where things can get out of hand? Here, police officers shy away from citing particular examples but say that those places where religious awareness is high and understanding of political processes is poor are likely spots for trouble. Giving names is invidious but anyone who has observed this part of Punjab knows that there are many such places. The Mehta-Sri Hargobindpur stretch, the area adjoining Dera Baba Nanak, comes to mind immediately. But it will be unfair to single out these places. There are others as well.
Nearly everyone Open talks to agrees that the farmers’ agitation should not be allowed to carry on any further. In Delhi, Surinder Jodhka, a long-time observer of Punjab politics who has written about the politics of Khalistan, downplays immediate threats but says, “The longer the farmers’ agitation goes on, the more chances it will give to elements who are fishing for trouble. Whatever be the mechanics of getting to a solution, efforts should be made to end it quickly.” The danger is not from an organised Khalistani party backed with money from abroad but from an unpredictable chain of events that no one can anticipate.
This, however, is easier said than done. As the Samyukt Kisan Morcha activist says, the agitation is no longer about farmers’ interests and has now acquired a different political dynamic. Publicly, in terms of what activists, intellectuals and others say, the debate remains centred on farmers’ livelihoods. But in reality the inability to reach a solution with the Government—in fact, an unwillingness to do so—points to a disturbing direction of politics. Anyone who has observed Punjab’s politics and those tasked with keeping the state in order know this is a disquieting moment. To view the agitation as a battle of attrition will be a mistake.

Although older but still relevant


Shows the level of patience by Delhi Police, GOI and Public in genereal for these Hormone Rich clowns.

Now the clowns are assuming it as sign of cowardice.
 
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Salvatore Babones is a Foreign Policy columnist and an adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. Twitter: @sbabones




Though opinion polls document broad popular support for Modi’s farm reforms, they have drawn some of India’s richest farmers onto the streets of Delhi and into the world’s media spotlight. That’s right: India’s better-off farmers, or at least farmers from those parts of India with the largest farms and the highest farm incomes.


Despite what activists and Western celebrities supporting the protests would have us believe, most of those who’ve been protesting the new laws since September aren’t drawn from the ranks of marginalized subsistence farmers driven by debt and despair to the edge of suicide. They represent instead the politically powerful (and heavily subsidized) remnants of India’s traditional landlord caste. These farmers fear that the laws will help large agribusinesses undermine the current state-directed system for buying farm produce and ultimately lead to the dismantling of the price support system on which they depend. They are demanding that the government repeal the reforms and guarantee the future of price supports.

Delhi’s farm protesters mainly hail from the Jat community, a caste group that spans northwest India and eastern Pakistan, covering the entire area of the old Punjab province of India before Partition. The Jats were historically an agricultural and military caste, analogous to the yeoman farmers of medieval England. In modern India, that association persists, whether or not individual Jats work in agriculture. Jats are mainly concentrated in Haryana (where they are predominantly Hindu) and Punjab (where they are predominantly Sikh), while most Muslim Jats now live in Pakistan.

Jats make up a relatively small proportion of India’s total population, but their concentration in Haryana and Punjab, and their association with the land, makes them locally powerful in these two states. Modern democratic India does not report population data by caste, but Hindu Jats are believed to constitute roughly one-quarter of the population of Haryana, while Sikh Jats make up a little more than one-fifth of the population of Punjab. In both states, Jats form the single largest caste group.

It has been estimated that Jats own roughly three-fourths or four-fifths of all agricultural land in Haryana and eastern Punjab, respectively. Nearly all medium- and large-scale farmers in both states are reputed to belong to the Jat community. The farm protesters’ claim to have mobilized 200,000 tractors for their Republic Day rally on Jan. 26 confirms the prevalence of relatively large-scale farmers among the protesters, given that few Indian farmers own enough land to practice mechanized agriculture. Even today, the typical Indian farmer is still 10 times more likely to own a bullock than a tractor.

Farm incomes in Punjab and Haryana are the highest in India, with the average farmer in these states earning more than twice the national average and nearly three times as much as their neighbors in nearby Uttar Pradesh. They also garner the lion’s share of government support. More than 90 percent of their cropland is covered by heavily subsidized irrigation. And the government buys almost the entire output of Punjab and Haryana farmers at minimum support prices that are set far above market levels. The results are huge and growing official stockpiles of wheat and rice, much of which ends up being given away to the country’s poor—or simply rotting in place.

The Jat farmers of Punjab and Haryana have long lobbied India’s government to maintain an agricultural system that is both economically wasteful and environmentally destructive. And why shouldn’t they? India is a democracy, and in a democracy, the squeaky wheel gets the grease—and the subsidies. The fact that India’s richest farmers are vocally demonstrating for policies that secure their livelihoods should come as no surprise. And the fact that they have convinced international celebrities and activists like Rihanna, Greta Thunberg, and Meena Harris to take up their cause is perhaps a bit odd but nonetheless impressive.

But when authoritative Western media outlets uncritically buy in to the “poor farmers” narrative, the result is pure misinformation. Articles suggesting that the BJP’s new farm laws threaten the livelihoods of as many as 800 million people must wrestle with the reality that in a country where 52 percent of the working population is engaged in agriculture, only 6 percent of the population actively disapprove of Modi’s performance in office. On the theory that most people—and especially poor people—are keenly aware of how government policies affect their pocketbooks, the default assumption must be that most Indian farmers believe that the new laws will actually help them, not hurt them.

India’s poorest farmers need the reforms because most of them do not have access to the high levels of government subsidies that benefit the larger-scale Jat farmers of Haryana and Punjab. Forced to sell to local middlemen at spot prices, they lack options for marketing their produce outside their home districts. They also lack access to financing and futures markets, management tools that most Western farmers take for granted. The new laws are designed to address these problems while maintaining minimum support prices for the relatively small number of farmers who actually receive them.

Yet the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of farmers (no one knows the true number) have swarmed the nation’s capital, blocking roads, camping out, and sometimes clashing with police. They have persisted in the face of official condemnation and the threat of coronavirus infection. They have found ways to organize and communicate even after the government tried to dampen the protests by shutting down mobile phone and internet networks. They have even risked the possibility of sedition charges carrying lengthy prison terms. What could motivate so many people to brave so much hardship if not a threat they see as truly dangerous?

But it’s not the threat to their livelihoods that has brought the Jats out into the streets. It’s the threat to their political power. The BJP’s farm reforms will empower smaller, poorer, lower-caste groups by giving them new outlets for their produce that circumvent long-established channels. The position of the Jats in Haryana and Punjab may be secure for now, but in a generation or two the reforms could transform them from a coddled agricultural aristocracy into a welfare-dependent rural peasantry. Their natural inclination is to try to stop the clock of liberalization—and if possible to turn it back. A better solution would be for them to find a way out of the cycle of dependence in which they are now trapped.

The traditional Jat landholders of Haryana and Punjab may be well-off by the standards of rural India, but they find themselves increasingly marginalized in India’s rapidly modernizing society. At a time when increasing numbers of lower-caste and outcaste urbanites are joining the 21st-century information economy, Jat farmers are being left behind on the farm. Reflecting this, Jat activists have even lobbied for the caste to be recognized as an official “backward class,” meriting affirmative action in university admissions and government employment. Coddled in a government subsidy bubble, their continued prosperity increasingly depends on maintaining a political dominance that is slowly slipping away.

In a vain effort to assuage the protesters’ fears, Modi has offered to put the reforms on hold for 18 months. That won’t help anyone—least of all the protesting Jats. A better solution would be to incorporate into the reforms a transition plan that offers the better-off farmers of Haryana and Punjab a route forward into the 21st-century market economy. These farmers lead the country in mechanization and employ millions of migrant laborers from neighboring states. They have the modern managerial know-how that Indian agriculture needs to succeed. They should be leading reforms, not protesting them. The challenge for Modi and the BJP is to find a way to bring them on board.
 

Salvatore Babones is a Foreign Policy columnist and an adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. Twitter: @sbabones




Though opinion polls document broad popular support for Modi’s farm reforms, they have drawn some of India’s richest farmers onto the streets of Delhi and into the world’s media spotlight. That’s right: India’s better-off farmers, or at least farmers from those parts of India with the largest farms and the highest farm incomes.


Despite what activists and Western celebrities supporting the protests would have us believe, most of those who’ve been protesting the new laws since September aren’t drawn from the ranks of marginalized subsistence farmers driven by debt and despair to the edge of suicide. They represent instead the politically powerful (and heavily subsidized) remnants of India’s traditional landlord caste. These farmers fear that the laws will help large agribusinesses undermine the current state-directed system for buying farm produce and ultimately lead to the dismantling of the price support system on which they depend. They are demanding that the government repeal the reforms and guarantee the future of price supports.

Delhi’s farm protesters mainly hail from the Jat community, a caste group that spans northwest India and eastern Pakistan, covering the entire area of the old Punjab province of India before Partition. The Jats were historically an agricultural and military caste, analogous to the yeoman farmers of medieval England. In modern India, that association persists, whether or not individual Jats work in agriculture. Jats are mainly concentrated in Haryana (where they are predominantly Hindu) and Punjab (where they are predominantly Sikh), while most Muslim Jats now live in Pakistan.

Jats make up a relatively small proportion of India’s total population, but their concentration in Haryana and Punjab, and their association with the land, makes them locally powerful in these two states. Modern democratic India does not report population data by caste, but Hindu Jats are believed to constitute roughly one-quarter of the population of Haryana, while Sikh Jats make up a little more than one-fifth of the population of Punjab. In both states, Jats form the single largest caste group.

It has been estimated that Jats own roughly three-fourths or four-fifths of all agricultural land in Haryana and eastern Punjab, respectively. Nearly all medium- and large-scale farmers in both states are reputed to belong to the Jat community. The farm protesters’ claim to have mobilized 200,000 tractors for their Republic Day rally on Jan. 26 confirms the prevalence of relatively large-scale farmers among the protesters, given that few Indian farmers own enough land to practice mechanized agriculture. Even today, the typical Indian farmer is still 10 times more likely to own a bullock than a tractor.

Farm incomes in Punjab and Haryana are the highest in India, with the average farmer in these states earning more than twice the national average and nearly three times as much as their neighbors in nearby Uttar Pradesh. They also garner the lion’s share of government support. More than 90 percent of their cropland is covered by heavily subsidized irrigation. And the government buys almost the entire output of Punjab and Haryana farmers at minimum support prices that are set far above market levels. The results are huge and growing official stockpiles of wheat and rice, much of which ends up being given away to the country’s poor—or simply rotting in place.

The Jat farmers of Punjab and Haryana have long lobbied India’s government to maintain an agricultural system that is both economically wasteful and environmentally destructive. And why shouldn’t they? India is a democracy, and in a democracy, the squeaky wheel gets the grease—and the subsidies. The fact that India’s richest farmers are vocally demonstrating for policies that secure their livelihoods should come as no surprise. And the fact that they have convinced international celebrities and activists like Rihanna, Greta Thunberg, and Meena Harris to take up their cause is perhaps a bit odd but nonetheless impressive.

But when authoritative Western media outlets uncritically buy in to the “poor farmers” narrative, the result is pure misinformation. Articles suggesting that the BJP’s new farm laws threaten the livelihoods of as many as 800 million people must wrestle with the reality that in a country where 52 percent of the working population is engaged in agriculture, only 6 percent of the population actively disapprove of Modi’s performance in office. On the theory that most people—and especially poor people—are keenly aware of how government policies affect their pocketbooks, the default assumption must be that most Indian farmers believe that the new laws will actually help them, not hurt them.

India’s poorest farmers need the reforms because most of them do not have access to the high levels of government subsidies that benefit the larger-scale Jat farmers of Haryana and Punjab. Forced to sell to local middlemen at spot prices, they lack options for marketing their produce outside their home districts. They also lack access to financing and futures markets, management tools that most Western farmers take for granted. The new laws are designed to address these problems while maintaining minimum support prices for the relatively small number of farmers who actually receive them.

Yet the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of farmers (no one knows the true number) have swarmed the nation’s capital, blocking roads, camping out, and sometimes clashing with police. They have persisted in the face of official condemnation and the threat of coronavirus infection. They have found ways to organize and communicate even after the government tried to dampen the protests by shutting down mobile phone and internet networks. They have even risked the possibility of sedition charges carrying lengthy prison terms. What could motivate so many people to brave so much hardship if not a threat they see as truly dangerous?

But it’s not the threat to their livelihoods that has brought the Jats out into the streets. It’s the threat to their political power. The BJP’s farm reforms will empower smaller, poorer, lower-caste groups by giving them new outlets for their produce that circumvent long-established channels. The position of the Jats in Haryana and Punjab may be secure for now, but in a generation or two the reforms could transform them from a coddled agricultural aristocracy into a welfare-dependent rural peasantry. Their natural inclination is to try to stop the clock of liberalization—and if possible to turn it back. A better solution would be for them to find a way out of the cycle of dependence in which they are now trapped.

The traditional Jat landholders of Haryana and Punjab may be well-off by the standards of rural India, but they find themselves increasingly marginalized in India’s rapidly modernizing society. At a time when increasing numbers of lower-caste and outcaste urbanites are joining the 21st-century information economy, Jat farmers are being left behind on the farm. Reflecting this, Jat activists have even lobbied for the caste to be recognized as an official “backward class,” meriting affirmative action in university admissions and government employment. Coddled in a government subsidy bubble, their continued prosperity increasingly depends on maintaining a political dominance that is slowly slipping away.

In a vain effort to assuage the protesters’ fears, Modi has offered to put the reforms on hold for 18 months. That won’t help anyone—least of all the protesting Jats. A better solution would be to incorporate into the reforms a transition plan that offers the better-off farmers of Haryana and Punjab a route forward into the 21st-century market economy. These farmers lead the country in mechanization and employ millions of migrant laborers from neighboring states. They have the modern managerial know-how that Indian agriculture needs to succeed. They should be leading reforms, not protesting them. The challenge for Modi and the BJP is to find a way to bring them on board.
Glad that some people in western countries are wise enough to understand the ground situation in India.
And we the small farmers are not backing down this time. Enough is enough
 
But @Maler won't understand that.
The Aratiyas in Punjab have been procuring wheat at lower rate from adjoining states and selling it at MSP to FCI that is why Punjab sells to FCI more than what it produces. The new farm laws have crippled this game and that is the main reason why this agitation. Now a farmer from districts of UP can sell his wheat in Punjab to FCI at MSP.
 
But @Maler won't understand that.
Doesn’t matter.
Small and marginal farmers constitute more than 76% of total farming community and politicians just can’t ignore our grievances anymore.

Large Landlords will find someone else to fleece on like renting their lands to Corporates like Amazon and Flipkart or sell or lease it to Builders for residential colonies like most Jatts and Jutts did in South Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. They are rent seekers after all.
We have absolutely no problem seeing these hormone rich guys beating the shit out of some BJP leaders in Punjab or Haryana. It’s can be considered as a sacrifice for Nation’s well-being 😀
 
The Aratiyas in Punjab have been procuring wheat at lower rate from adjoining states and selling it at MSP to FCI that is why Punjab sells to FCI more than what it produces. The new farm laws have crippled this game and that is the main reason why this agitation. Now a farmer from districts of UP can sell his wheat in Punjab to FCI at MSP.
They have a huge cartel that bribes the system to facilitate interstate grain transportation and subsequent selling to Govt mandis bypassing normal quota of single Krishak Card holder in Punjab(if they had any like we have here)
Meanwhile we can’t even sell our own products to some trader in the city due to those same agents in Excise and Police department who used to harass people like us who can’t give large enough bribe due to financial difficulties and therefore forced to sell it to either on the ground to these seasonal agents coming from these states or to local sahukaars at cheap price who in-turn sell it to those agents or some big traders after getting their commission.
 
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PS: we don’t have resources to do that ie transport and sell to any other State Mandi. What it will do on immediate basis is to end the harassment by police and excise and we can legally transport and sell our products to the cities nearest to us.
It will also end monopoly of these Seasonal Purchasers and there will be more and more agents from various companies and states who will hopefully give us better deal than what we are getting currently
 
They have a huge cartel that bribes the system to facilitate interstate grain transportation and subsequent selling to Govt mandis bypassing normal quota of single Krishak Card holder in Punjab(if they had any like we have here)
Meanwhile we can’t even sell our own products to some trader in the city due to those same agents in Excise and Police department who used to harass people like us who can’t give large enough bribe due to financial difficulties and therefore forced to sell it to either on the ground to these seasonal agents coming from these states or to local sahukaars at cheap price who in-turn sell it to those agents or some big traders after getting their commission.
PS: we don’t have resources to do that ie transport and sell to any other State Mandi. What it will do on immediate basis is to end the harassment by police and excise and we can legally transport and sell our products to the cities nearest to us.
It will also end monopoly of these Seasonal Purchasers and there will be more and more agents from various companies and states who will hopefully give us better deal than what we are getting currently
I fully agree with you. Even We had problems in bringing vegetables and wheat from our own fields in Haryana. My agri lands are in an area what is known as Nahar Paar in Faridabad. The police will check us on the border and any kind of vegetables more than what a family needs wiould be confiscated if caught. That was the state of affairs. As a farmer I could not transport my own grown stuff from my own fields to my home which happened to be in a different city/state.
The biggest set back of these farm laws has been to Punjab and not so much to Haryana due to these Aratiyas. There was a very well lubricated system of extortion and balck marketing of agri produce in place perfected over three decades and the direct beneficiary were the politicians.
By linking payment to land records and direct transfer of money, Modi has in one stroke knocked off this system. Now a man producing 25 quintals/acre of wheat with a land holding of ten acres, will not be able to show a produce of 500 quintals and sell the produce at MSP which he had actually bought from other farmers. There are many people within Punjab who do not own any land but sell agri produce at MSP. And such pseudo farmers are all around. Hope you guys remember the case of Chiddu when he claimed agri income of over 4 cr by growing cauliflower in his balcony.

Why capt. Amarinder is not sharing the land data of farmers with FCI is for this exact reason as this system of bogus sales and true nature of Punjab agri economy will be exposed blackening the face of every politician of Punjab including these so called farmers who are agitating.
 
They have a huge cartel that bribes the system to facilitate interstate grain transportation and subsequent selling to Govt mandis bypassing normal quota of single Krishak Card holder in Punjab(if they had any like we have here)
Meanwhile we can’t even sell our own products to some trader in the city due to those same agents in Excise and Police department who used to harass people like us who can’t give large enough bribe due to financial difficulties and therefore forced to sell it to either on the ground to these seasonal agents coming from these states or to local sahukaars at cheap price who in-turn sell it to those agents or some big traders after getting their commission.

But how does these middlemen transport such huge quantities of crops from other states into Punjab? Shouldn't we have cracked on illegal crossing of crops produce from other BJP ruled states into Punjab?