Regarding the latest farm bills, Dr. S Krishna Kumar IAS (Retd.) Former Union Minister says, “I applaud Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the latest agriculture reforms which will bring a revolution in Indian Agriculture and drastically improve the Indian farmers’ income and living standards. The reform has made farmers free from restrictions on sale of their produce and ended the monopoly of vested interests and rapacious traders. It has also opened the window for private capital by allowing farmers to enter into beneficial deals with large buyers such as exporters and retailers. Removing all barriers for agriculture trade in the country, these reforms allow free sale of the farmers’ produce for the best possible price. This will not only benefit the farmers but also the citizens who will get cheaper and better products. This will also help the farmers to access high quality seeds, fertilizers and pesticides for the cheapest price”.
He said as a student of the Indian agricultural sector and as a Former Union Minister of State for Agriculture who has seen the plight of the farming community all over India, I reiterate that the epoch making reforms will release the great potential of the Indian agriculture sector. The Indian farmer has the rustic wisdom of centuries and will easily see the merit of the reforms and discard the false propaganda of the middlemen and vested interests who have exploited them for ages through an archaic middlemen friendly rural agricultural trading system. The antiques of the Congress, the main opposition party, in this matter are predictable as they follow a pattern of pouring anti Modi Vitriol without authentic analysis or ideological consistency. But it is a blasphemy that the so called Left who claim to have fought against landlordism and rural hegemony are opposing this great reform which emancipates the Indian farmers from their economic slavery.
As India moves on to the digital age every Indian farmer will be able to identify the best suppliers of his farm inputs and the best buyers for their produce and increase his farm income to much higher levels bypassing the exploiters who are now hell-bent on misleading them. The farmers do not have to worry about any of the vagaries of the open market system as the security of the solid government implemented crops procurement and public distribution system, with high floor prices for crops remains untouched and protected by the Modi government.
