Page 6 - Intl. Review (Draft 1.3)

SHIVAJI INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

duce Trade and Commerce (Pro- terface for investment into farm- ciently and justly.
duction and Facilitation) Act”. ing services now that the whole A triangular predicament
One might wonder, perhaps the process is nurtured under the Finally, we get to part 3 of
whole could greater than sum umbrella of specificized frame- 3, which this time around, isn’t
of the parts? It would be worth works. Still, there’s agitation in an act in itself, rather an amend-
exploring the add-ons in further fear of cunning swindles pulled ment, a game-changing one at
detail. by the busy analysts at work with that. It’s the “Essential Commod-
the big firms whose motive will ities (Amendment) Act, 2020”,
The grey between black & and be to pull-off every possible trick and this one stands devoted to
the white up their sleeve to buy low and bringing down the rudimentarily
To that end, the second sell high, putting the squeeze on obsolete apparatus of govern-
contender in line is the affec- the farmer now bound firmly to mental involvement with price
tionately titled “Farmers (Em- his obligations. Nevertheless, it’s setting in cases of hoarding and
powerment and Protection) not the type of thing to condemn shortages.
Agreement on Price Assurance forthwith without discovering its The national Econom-
and Farm Services Act, 2020”. execution, whether the regula- ic Survey of 2020’s Volume 1
A mouthful in its own right, this tory frameworks function effi- spent no less than the entirety
act focuses all about the quin- Farmers shout slogans as they participate in a protest at the Delhi Singhu border on December
tessence of contract farming. 18, 2020 in Delhi, India. Hundreds of thousands of farmers from surrounding states have been
Finally establishing framework protesting on the outskirts of Delhi for weeks, (Getty Images / Anindito Mukherjee)
for the legislatively sponsored
formalisation of the dealings
a farmer takes up with the big
boys of the industry.

“There’s agitation in
fear of cunning swindles
pulled by the busy ana-
lysts at work with the big
firms whose motive will
be to pull-off every pos-
sible trick up their sleeve
to buy low and sell high,
putting the squeeze on
the farmer now bound
firmly to his obligations”.

On paper, it seems like a
brilliant initiative, and to some
intuitive extent, rather an obvi-
ous one that instead feels more
problematic in its absence to-
date. It offers legal cover and
protection for the farmer assur-
ing him the promised price on the
culmination of his season-long
efforts, which hitherto, lay ex-
posed to last-minute changes,
fluctuations, and straightaway
manipulation and abuse of loop-
holes and legalese. This gives
a much-appreciated shield as
well as enabled a smoother in-

5 SPRING 2021