Key Points
Far from making agriculture 'financially viable', as the agitating farm leaders have claimed, these demands, if accepted, will actually ruin the agriculture economies of Punjab, Haryana and UP, three states whose farmers are leading the protests...
If they had done the maths, representatives of the 200 farmers' unions participating in the protests would have realised that GoI cannot meet their list of demands without risking a severe fiscal crisis, sabotaging rural banks, and disincentivising and disrupting migration, which is the bedrock of farming in the three states..
Here, the issue is why should GoI create a public pension scheme for farmers that is 30 times the existing non-contributory public pension scheme for the poor?.
Clearly, unions have cobbled together a set of demands without any concern about their consequences on Indian agriculture, fellow farmers across the country, and the economy overall...
Unions representing farmers in northern India have been emboldened after their year-long protest two years ago when they forced the Modi government to withdraw three farm Bills..
