Dilli Chalo: Why are farmers angry and protesting?

Thousands of farmers from Punjab have been marching to Delhi to protest against three contentious farm laws. These three laws were passed by the government in September.

According to the government’s claim, these laws will give freedom to the farmers from the middle man. These three laws are -

(a) The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020,
(b) The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 and
(c ) The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020.

At present, there is a mandi system in every state where farmers go and sell their produce.

This system is controlled by the government. The government fixes a price which is called the minimum support price (MSP) and buys produced from the farmers on that price.

Now, with the three laws government has given the freedom to farmers to sell their products whosoever they want. There is no legal obligation to sell the products to the government-controlled mandi only.

After the enactment of the three laws, private players and big corporates can buy products from the farmers at the mutually decided price.

However, farmers are against the three laws as they believe that the government will stop fixing MSPs and they are left at the mercy of big corporate houses.

They are suspicious that these laws have been enacted to favour big corporate houses and for these reasons, they demand the withdrawal of these three laws.

They are marching on foot, plying on tractors and other vehicles to reach Delhi so that they can pressurize the government to for the rollback.