Farms, Farmers and Farmer Protests with Gunvant Patil - Part 1
Where I speak to Indian Farmer leader Gunvant Patil Hangargekar to explore few fundamental questions about Indian Agriculture
Shri. Gunvant Patil Hangargekar belongs to the liberalist school of Indian Agriculture. He has been an active leader of Shetkari Sangathana, one of India's largest farmers’ associations, founded by the late liberal farm leader Sharad Joshi.
During the second wave of farmers’ protests in India, coinciding with the farmer protests in Europe, I had an opportunity to dialogue with Gunvant Patil ji on farms, farmers and farmers’ protests.
If you think about it, every farmer protest event is a double-edged, double-bind conflict between the farm and the farmer.
Damned if you prioritise the farm over the farmer.
Damned if you prioritise the farmer over the farm.

In my freewheeling chat with Gunvant Patil ji, we started from this fundamental double-bind and the conversation led to fascinating places. Since he was more comfortable speaking in Hindi, I tried my best to articulate my thoughts in Hindi and got the entire conversation translated by a few friends.
Here is the first part of the edited transcript for the English readers of this newsletter. If you follow Hindi, you can check out the complete video conversation in Hindi below.
Venky Ramachandran:
When we spoke last time about farmer protests, you said that this has become a dharmic meta crisis - a double bind of sorts- where we are forced to choose between farms on one end and farmers on the other end. Could you share more? Why do you think this has become a stalemate?
Gunvant Patil:
The farm comes first, followed by the farmer. In old Indian cinema, we saw pregnancy scenes where the doctor would say that he could either save the mother or the child. Similarly, there is now a choice between saving the farm or the farmer. We typically talk about saving farmers first - We ask them to continue their farm lifestyle without progressing further and that has led to various kinds of distortions we see today.
We have to save agriculture first. Farmers will automatically be saved.
Let’s understand this with an example. When we talk about evolution and hunter-gatherers, we used to live in the forest. Our day revolved around hunting. Later, our women ancestors invented farming. They felt that instead of foraging fruits in the forest, it is better to plant the seeds of the fruits we ate and thereby do farming.
The Agricultural Revolution started from this point.
Forests kept shrinking and agriculture kept growing. Forests and farming share an antagonistic relationship. If you want to expand the forest, agriculture will decline. As long as you increase farming, forests will start disappearing. There will always be a conflict between the environment and farming.
The conflict between agriculturists and environmentalists will be endemic unless you use newer technologies like hydroponics or aeroponics. Let’s assume 100 people left the forest and entered agriculture. As we started doing agriculture, we started integrating various things. At first, we did it with our own hands, tools came further- we started ploughing with tools and slowly the technology evolved.
In Marathi, there is a popular saying- 12 per cent of the people were taken away from the farming ecosystem and started to work on ancillary tools related to farming. Agriculture requires a plough for ploughing which requires iron and so one became a blacksmith and enabled agriculture with tools like wooden plough and iron spade. A farmer has to wear clothes and so the cloth maker emerged. Likewise, 12 ancillary units came out to help farmers.
If we look at the current figures, 35 per cent came out of farming. 65 per cent are still stuck in farming. In North America, only 2 per cent survive on farming. In Europe, only four per cent have taken up farming.
Venky Ramachandran:
And they are also protesting.
Gunvant Patil:
We will talk about global protests shortly. People who moved out of farming became progressive. And those who got stuck in farming continued farming in the old way. Look at third-world countries stuck in farming. If you look at the entire farming community from Europe to America, they are trying to save farming by taking people out of farming. Farmers are burdened by agriculture. 65 per cent are stuck in Indian agriculture. This should at least become 12 per cent for any hopes of saving Indian agriculture.
If farmers continue farming on 1 or 2 acres, it cannot become an economic model as they will try to protect themselves first. Until farming becomes an economic model, this stalemate will continue and farmers will continue to protest and raise slogans. Governments are unable to provide employment outside and so they are finding employment in farming.
Venky Ramachandran:
Yes, many are returning to agriculture. Reverse structural transformation is happening.
Gunvant Patil:
Instead of investing in processing units and technology, we are talking about doing farming differently- doing natural farming and using technology minimally. If farmers continue with primitive modes of farming, farming cannot be saved and farmers will suffer. Therefore, we have to save farming first and farmers later.
Venky Ramachandran:
I want to delve deeper into this. You are talking about saving farms. The fact of the matter is that farmers are currently protesting in this country and there are talks of legalizing MSP. Things seem to have progressed from how to when.
Others have approached this problem differently. Harish Damodaran, in his laws of farming, talks of how agriculture is the only business where there is both production risk and price risk and therefore needs protection. In most industries, with the likely exception of the semiconductor industry, you either have production risk or price risk.
In which case, on what basis are you suggesting that farms must be saved, followed by the farmer? At one level, evolution dictates that the population of the farmers will continue to decline. In India, industries are not growing. During the pandemic, many migrant labourers returned to agriculture and their villages. On what basis do you suggest that we should now be focusing on farms and not farmers?
Gunvant Patil:
Let’s take the case of the three farm bills that were repealed. They were not focused on farmers but on farming. As per the ninth schedule of the constitution, 284 laws were shielded against judicial review. This included the Ceiling Act and the Land Acquisition Act. These laws go against land and farming. What should we do for the land to become profitable?
Any farmer or any industrialist investing in farming should become profitable. Today, the reality is such that the caste of “Farmers” has become stagnant in their modes of thinking. No rich person does farming. He might invest in lands. But he doesn’t do farming. Until you make land profitable, people [businesses] will not come. We have made such anachronistic laws in India such as the Land Ceiling Act which states that you cannot keep more than 18 acres of irrigated land and 54 acres of dry land. This ceiling was brought to share and distribute land for the poor. Understandable Socialism. We used to follow Russia and so we thought this was the right thing to do.
Let’s talk about the second act.
Let’s say, you have 5 acres of land; you are educated and forward-thinking. Even if you don’t find it profitable, you cannot leave farming and sell the land and become landless. This is the essence of the law. If the wealthy want to invest money into farming, they cannot do it. The cases of celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee are still pending. If no farming has been done in ten generations, the law states that they cannot become farmers. This means that new money cannot come into farming. Another law of tribals states that only tribals can buy tribal land. Only a sick man can cure a sick man. An expert cannot come and provide any treatment.
What this means is this. You have withheld the potential of the land.
And by grouping those who worked in a land, you have constrained them. 12 per cent of the people (involved in agriculture) were taken out - the tailor went out, the blacksmith went out, the engineer went out, the metallurgists went out, the leather technology experts went out. Earlier they all belonged to a particular caste. Now, these castes no longer matter.
The leather technologist belonged to a caste named chamar which comprised access to both the market and the technology. Today, anyone can become a cobbler. Anyone can become a mechanic.
Anyone can become a blacksmith but no one can become a farmer.
Why? We have withheld the potential of the land. What is the Naxal movement? Weren’t they simply asking for the land? They weren’t asking for a garage or petrol pump. They wanted to liberate the land. These movements went haywire as they tried to bind us with our lands.
My mentor-leader Sharad Joshi used to say that farming is a loss-making deal. The governments have deliberately made it a loss-making deal as the manufacturers want cheap goods and people have been made to keep working hard. If it weren’t for the cheap raw material, many industry units wouldn’t be economical and profitable.
Farming will continue to deteriorate throughout, so farming has to be saved. We should make every effort to make farming an economic unit.
Many farmer protests are taking place in different countries. In Belgium, it is happening as farmer incomes aren’t keeping up with expenses and the workplace is not good. In France, They are protesting against the restrictions placed on farms due to global warming. Italy’s protests are similar to India’s. We are not getting as much [income] through production to take care of our production costs.
In Germany, environmentalists have called for reducing diesel subsidies with the hopes that if they burn less diesel, pollution will be reduced. Much like New Delhi's stubble issue, Germany is trying to cut down the subsidy on diesel. If subsidy is not given, people will not do farming and will leave farming. This is the problem of progressive countries - Those who are not ready to do farming will have to be provided subsidies to make sure that they continue farming and don’t leave farming. Subsidies are provided to make farming viable and economical. In Poland, goods from Ukraine are entering Polish markets as their local markets have collapsed due to war and so Polish farmers are struggling.
Every country's farmer protest is unique.
Our farmer protest is unique. Our [Shetkari Sanghatana’s] protest centres on the fact that farmers are not getting back their production costs. We do not need a food subsidy. Liberate us from our shackles, give us technology and the market. If this were the objective of the protest happening at the border, I would have happily joined the protests.
Venky:
Right now the opposite is happening.
Gunvant Patil:
They are asking for strengthening the hold of the government - the laws of the government. They want the market and APMC to be in the hands of the government. They opposed the three farm bills as they didn’t include these. Governments wanted to leave it to the hands of the market and usher in technology.
They opposed the three laws and what were they demanding? Fixed subsidies and Guaranteed MSP. Today, the MSP of wheat is at 2275 INR. Even if the MSP goes up to 300 INR; if the PDS schemes come to an end tomorrow and if governments stop doling out food, wheat prices will go up to 4000 INR. That will be the real market.
We now have an artificial market, a distorted market where the government buys from the farmers of Punjab, sells it for 2 rupees, and now gives it for free. A guarantee of free ration has been provided for 5 years. What this means is this. We cannot save farming any longer. If you are talking about giving it for free, the FCI cost for distribution and procurement per kg is more than 30 INR; this expenditure costs double the MSP rate provided from procurement to storage.
The market rate is more than 40 INR and the government gives it to farmers at 22 INR. All this mess is unnecessary. Farmers would benefit if governments stepped out of the way and let them take the necessary value of the produce from the market.
When the Ukraine war was happening, Indian wheat was about to be exported for the first time. We had been exporting rice for a long time. But we had never exported wheat. We stopped exports and it ended up becoming a free grain in the public distribution scheme. Farmer protests began there. Farmers have problems. No doubt about it. But how do you solve this problem? What is your strategy?
..To be continued.
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