Well my dads a farmer and he has no problem with these laws and you will find the same with majority of the farmers in India. They support the law, literally every economist is giving their approval to these laws. There will naturally be some opposing the law and the government has held a dozen meetings with the small number of farmers to discuss each and every point, but they are hell bent on repealing the law instead of amending, which imo is not very constructive.

Whether your dad is okay with it or not is irrelevant though.

The fact remains though that many are unhappy about it and have been attacked violently. The fact is that the police have filed FIRs against people for voicing support.

Those are the salient points to this discussion on whether India will ban Twitter or not

It's true that considerable number of farmers are unhappy with the new farm laws. But an even larger number of farmers are just fine with those. Ideally, this should be implemented differently in each state, as situation in each state is different. Violence does not help in anyway - either by the farmers or the police.

The other point is about involvement of shady organizations.

There is evidence that the protests were planned in advance. Greta Thunberg seems to be involved. I have read the document which was published on Cryptpad. While the document is not really encouraging violence, it does have phrases which clearly intend to malign India's image. A Canadian outfit called 'poetic justice' is also involved.

read the article from the Print https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspe...

and this is the link for the toolkit https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/ehTz+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivw...

while the toolkit does not directly incite violence , it clearly mentions that the plan was followed per schedule. the protests were already planned despite the leaders of protests giving their word that the protests would be peaceful on the republic day.

the toolkit reveals intentions to malign India by asking people all over the world to protest infront of Indian embassies

"Malign India's image" is a typical response when someone outside says what wrong is going on. Whatever that toolkit and organisation is doing is creating awareness among people about farmer's protest. Where is the malign India part?

Anybody can spread awareness like this. John Oliver did like this many times e.g. during net neutrality, he asked all trolls to write complain to FCC.

This is how less powerful can organise online. Meanwhile Indian govt and it's cyber gang is the one who is making sportsperson and celebrities to post some copy paste tweet to counter this. This is what gov propaganda looks like.

Greta Thunberg is not 'less powerful'. And the Khailstani organisations are also not less powerful.

The accusation that Indian govt is asking celebrities to copy paste tweet could be true.

but did you consider the possibility that some of those celebrities truly want things to be settled peacefully?

could Mia , Rihanna and Greta be also not part of a propaganda?

Even if both sides are using propaganda as a weapon, atleast celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar are not spreading lies. They are only giving a positive message. They want the whole matter to be solved and for that it's the Indian government and the Indian farmers who have to work together.

Tendulkr is spreading lies as the tweet (which is a copy paste job) makes it look like thing are going well on farmers side and gov is thinking about them. Where did rihanna and greta lied? You are also spreading propaganda here or just biased like sachn.

Gov doesn't want to work together, they made the law and want everyone to obey them.

Exactly. Not all farmers are protesting. It can be good for some, but it's definitely risky for people who are already doing well with the existing MSP system. But social platforms show you what you previously liked, and people get conditioned to not see both sides of the coin. It can be good for poor states who are already throwing their crops due to low MSP rates.

How quickly people devolve into conspiracy theories when authoritarian forces are questioned.

So anyone criticizing India is involved in a global conspiracy to malign it?

As an Indian, I am dissapointed in how quickly this country has turned on its own people in the name of the ruling party. Where does it end?

please read the document before dismissing it as a consiparcy theory. It clearly mentions to people in other countries to protest in front of Indian embassies.

What does someone from UK understand about Indian farmers? By all means protest in India - without resorting to violence. No point in protesting in other country unless you think that will create external pressure on the Indian government. Here the government is willing to talk further, even put a stay on the laws for 18 months , but the protestors just do not want to collaborate.

I agree that the government should have been transparent from the beginning. The stubbornness of ruling government escalated situation. But atleast now they are ready to talk. Why do the protesters still want to keep escalating by resorting to violence?

I did read it. It's pure garbage. How can you, with a straight face, read that and believe it? It's text book conspiracy.

Most farmers don't get proper money for their crop, much less than what protesting farmers are getting. These farmers have something like minimum wage that protects them. These laws will remove these protection.

Those who are ok with it, don't have that protection, already get much lower payment than what they should, law does not effect them. This is the vast majority of farmers btw. So they don't care.

But saying just because vast majority ok without knowing what is going on is very shellfish. Educate yourself before making allegations.

Just to add the context - the law does't target MSP directly. They are basically saying that now all farmers of the country can sell their produce without the control of government owned marketplaces called 'mandis'. In 'mandis' there is a minimum support price, so farmers have a guarentee of getting atleast that much for their produce. Now when market will be opened, this will probably kill the MSP system, as now this will be an open market where farmers will directly deal with corporates or their consumers. Right now the produce has to be strictly sold with government owned mandis, which I think is causing government financial losses.

The protests were generally peaceful, but recently on our republic day we cannot say it remained peaceful. I think government should have first spent time in making people understand the pros/cons of the changes and take their feedback if they are ready. Any protests long drawn, can turn violent.

My personal take on this is that farmers are not ready yet to face the corporate world as buyers. This law should come, but not now. And Government can build an intermediary organization to work with both mandis and corporates - but again, whenever government builds something in India, the officers appointed use corruption to take it from useful to useless. So that also won't work. I don't know, what can solve this issue apart from government holding off the laws. They are saying they can put the law on hold for 1.5 years, but the protest is at a stage where they want it to be totally taken back. The case is also in supreme court of India where I think they have made a committee to solve this. But I believe protesters are very concerned about livelihood post these laws. I guess that's the trouble with big changes like this, it can impact people positively/negatively in short term but might boost the economy in long run. It's important to protect people during these major changes also. May be NGOs can be used to first raise awareness - small A/B test can be done with experiment group. I don't know why governments don't do incremental changes slowly.

I share the same fear farmers have in regards to corporations taking over things. I have seen documentaries about how the 3-5 corporate monopolies in USA are abusing the chicken farmers. So I don't know if the Indian farmers fear about corporations are entirely wrong.

Having said that, I think the new laws are good for India. These are the arguments I have heard in favor of the new laws:

India introduced the current MSP related system back in 1960 to inspire farmers to grow those crops when India had a huge shortage of food grains, and was importing food directly from US (google 'ship to mouth india'). That is not the case now. India actually has a surplus of those grains.

Also, MSP covers only something like 15-26 food crops produced in India. For example, we all saw how onion prices dropped to insanely low prices last 2 years. There was no MSP for them. Just yesterday, there was news of a farmer in UP dumping 1000 kg cauliflower because of low prices.

Also, I believe this MSP cover is available only in certain states, which puts other states at a disadvantage. To make things complicated, there is a law that guarantees certain grains at low price for the poor. For example, the govt will give rice at 3 rupees to the poor. Govt has to buy the rice from the farmers because of the MSP system (say at Rs 20), and then in turn sell them to the poor at Rs.3 in a state which doesn't have MSP, thus putting the farmers in the non MSP states at a huge disadvantage.

Another reason I heard is that farmers are producing huge amounts of MSP crops such as rice and wheat because the price is guaranteed, while ignoring other crops that India has to heavily import (such as ground nut). The govt has to purchase the MSP grains no matter what, and the godowns have way more in stock than India could distribute (almost double or more last year).

Also, some of these MSP crops like rice require lot of water for cultivation, and considering the shortage of water in most places in India, govt wants to reduce the farming of such crops.

I agree to your points. For India's future growth opening of such markets is very crucial. But government could have just introduced corporate mandis where regulators would be there, and corporates will also be present. The regulators will plan the next season according to corporate demand. Slowly, the corporate mandis would have gotten more share and farmers would have felt safer. Nobody likes abrupt changes when they are at the receiving end of uncertainty. and that's what is happening.

Also, the world is seeing rise of social media platforms over governments where a celebrity can tweet and ask their followers to attack a building or start a protest. In such a novel volatile environment it's very important for governments to adapt and understand their population. And I also read that this change was in discussion already from a decade and also present in manifesto of the opposition party. It's a loss making system for government and the taxes we are paying are balancing that loss. As far as I can deduce, MSP has become a welfare scheme now. I wish, it would have not become the mess it is now and farmers could have also feel safer to move to open market and compete globally.

To be clear the police did attack the farmers long before republic day. It's a pressure cooker situation right now

Did they actually attack? I haven't come across any news about that.

Yes they've been constantly attacked since the early days of the protest, from last year. There's a lot of footage online of it from November/December.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55156219

I am from Kerala, which is currently ruled by the communists. I see protesters getting lathi charged and water cannoned pretty much every month (pre covid). So, honestly I can't say the farmers were treated badly based on the image in the BBC article. I am not saying violence is good, but police were lathi charging people during the corona lockdowns also.

1. The protest on the republic day was not peaceful. Some groups among protesters hoisted a different flag on the Red fort, Delhi 2. Not all farmers across the country are protesting. Some are. Mainly Punjab, Haryana, few from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, Rajasthan. 3. It's true that the government has not been totally transparent. But they put a stay on implementation of farm laws for the next 18 months and offered to continue further discussion. However, the protesters continued the protests and vandalised Red fort, a historic building in New Delhi. The protests did become violent on the Republic day where the police were injured.

You forgot UP, Karnataka, Kerala, and WB. So, it's pretty much most of India :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme...

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states...

The law is also removing mandatory middle men who had a lot of sway over the farmers who had to go through them to sell their produce. Effectively going towards a free-er market.

> ...is removing minimum purchase prices for produce.

This is false. They are removing the restriction that all produce has to be sold in a APMCs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_co...)

It is more nuanced. The peaceful protestors got violent. They attacked the Red fort and flew flags for a separatist movement after bringing down the Indian flag.

Such an attack on democracy should not be allowed.

>after bringing down the Indian flag

Indian flag was not even touched. Stop spreading lies.

There's not even a single other instance where flag was disrespected during last 4+ months. So, why it happened only there? It was conspired and scripted by govt to malign the movement. The entry gates were also not secure.

Why did they fly a religious flag?

There is no excuse for political violence in a democracy.

Those who committed it and their enablers and supporters should be brought to justice.

Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence.

Police are strict - you blame the govt. Police are lax - you blame the govt.

No winning with anti democratic forces.

> Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence.

Have some strength to hear the facts