In an interview with noted economist Prem Shankar Jha, Mitali Mukherjee discussed some of the key points of contention around the 3 Farm Laws .
The first point of debate is what percentage of farmers benefit from the minimum support price (MSP) regime – on that Mr Jha believes the data cited by Prof Ashok Gulati is both dated and not detailed enough. More recent numbers that detail employment within the rural region point to the fact that the percentage of farmers benefitting from MSP is closer to 15% , covering in particular states like Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.
On the second point of whether these protests are being pushed by mainly large farmers, Mr Jha pointed out that this is a moot point, as the actual benchmark to gauge benefit should be the fertility and output farmers get, for eg. Farmers in Rajasthan have extremely large tracts of land but very poor output.
On the point of whether the protest is only farmers from Punjab and Haryana, the economist pointed to regions that contributed the most to agri output, and that covers a large part of North India. Tamil Nadu for instance has hardly any tillable soil and hence, would not have the same motivation to participate in laws regarding Farmers rights.
Mr Jha said the honourable thing for the Central government to do would be to hold the laws in abeyance and re-examine the laws in a consultative fashion. MSP or minimum support price mechanisms were a necessary and important safety net that countries world over, particularly the EU provide for their farm community.
