Failure to Communicate with Farmers

We live in the suburbs of Washington, DC and were discussing about the ongoing farmers’ protests and the recently passed farm laws in India. We recall the analysis of time related to farming and trading that we had done while we were working in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad from the 1960s onwards, long ago, doing our research in the farm sector in India. The farmers still do not get suitable/appropriate returns on the time that they spend on taking care of the agricultural produce as compared to that spent on the same produce by traders and merchants. Thus, in policy planning, due attention should be paid to the time spent and income earned by the farmers, traders, and merchants, respectively, in moving any agricultural produce from the farm to the consumer.

Given this kind of growing inequality of the time spent, the government should have spent a lot more time in discussing with farmers from all sections of the farm society about the farm laws before using the force of the majority in Parliament. That failure is the main cause behind the protest.