-The Indian Express It is the rural middle class — which experienced a roughly four-decade spell of prosperity from the 1970s and now has its back to the wall — that’s at the forefront of the agitation against the farm reform laws. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended his government’s agricultural reform laws by invoking Chaudhary Charan Singh and pointing to the “dayaniya sthiti (sorry plight)” of marginal farmers. These below-one-hectare cultivators...

-Down to Earth blog The distress among small farmers in India is market-driven to a large extent in both ways — too much protection (minimum support price) or too little. The question of future of Indian agriculture has been around for some time now since the agrarian distress and crisis in the sector. It has become important in the context of the spate of recent reforms that include permitting private wholesale markets,...

-Counterview.net It seems that that there is a complete breakdown of trust between the Union government and farmers. The multiple rounds of negotiations, offer to negotiate clause by clause of the farms’ bills fail to convince the farmers. As a result, there is no sign that the sit-in by the farmers around Delhi’s border would go up in the near future. It appears to have tuned into a question of ego...

-IDROnline.org Agriculture value-chains can only be strengthened by listening to multiple actors; most importantly, farmers. India has been witnessing a spate of month-long farmer protests across the country, particularly in the national capital, against the recently introduced farm bills by the central government. One of the major reasons behind these agitations, including calls for repealing the law, is that farmers were not actively involved in the policymaking cycle of these laws, which...

-TheWire.in While rich farmers, who were so far aloof from the struggle, have been compelled to join the small peasantry in the face of a larger corporate threat, it is yet to be seen if the protests will temper existing inequalities. The present farmers’ struggle knocking at the doors of the capital is a culmination of many streams of ideologies, concerns and a wide class coalition. Like any dynamic mass movement, the...