The Unmaking of the Farm Laws
by Preeti Ahluwalia Productivity, sustainability & security are the key needs of Indian agriculture; a sector which has been languishing for years. Legacy problems caused by systems that have outlived their utility have created socio-economic & environmental imbalances. Multiple committee reports have been published year after year for decades, covering a variety of issues. There is no dearth of solutions – in theory. But where are the reforms? The answer lies in the political economy of India. Wide-ranging reforms where farmers, as a key electoral constituency, will lose out on some immediate benefits, are politically hard to pursue. In addition to that, there are a few legal challenges – Agriculture in India falls under the State List, and rightly so. But this leads to a few challenges related to inter-state co-ordination as well as difficulty in creating a pan-India market. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of extreme stress for Indians, t