7 ms·

Can someone summarize the issue? The article is behind a paywall.

by nafey 6y ago

baxter001 6y ago
It's an article post on the paywalled site platformer.news (Alexa Rank 57,888, most of the sites visitors coming from cnewton.org) by the San Francisco based founder and writer of platformer.news Casey Newton, the article title ends in a question mark.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dagmx 6y ago
The current party in power in India is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is akin to removing minimum wage for farmers in a market where it would be financial ruin for most farmers and give way to corporate farms leading the way. The farmers were peacefully protesting and the government has reacted by attacking them quite brutally etc.. recently they've also issued FIRs (effectively arrest warrants) for foreigners who've voiced their support for the farmers on Twitter. Generally the government is trying to keep exposure to these events as low as possible. Twitter is obviously not beholden to their wishes.
- Chetan496 6y ago
  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.
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    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_farmers%27_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme... https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states-that-have-bypassed-farm-laws-1753995-2020-12-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states...
- cscurmudgeon 6y ago
  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.
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    >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.
    - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
      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.
      - mandeepj 6y ago
        > Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence. Have some strength to hear the facts
- l0k3ndr 6y ago
  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.
  - dagmx 6y ago
    To be clear the police did attack the farmers long before republic day. It's a pressure cooker situation right now
    - nonamechicken 6y ago
      Did they actually attack? I haven't come across any news about that.
- nell 6y ago
  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.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  > ...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_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_co...)
- bhaskara2 6y ago
  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.
  - dagmx 6y ago
    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
    - Chetan496 6y ago
      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-suspected-for-farmers-protest-toolkit-tweeted-by-greta-thunberg/599098/ 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+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivwVCKhwNe7OD1YHDiBUj0Y/ 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

Can someone summarize the issue? The article is behind a paywall.

by nafey 6y ago

Can someone summarize the issue? The article is behind a paywall.

It's an article post on the paywalled site platformer.news (Alexa Rank 57,888, most of the sites visitors coming from cnewton.org) by the San Francisco based founder and writer of platformer.news Casey Newton, the article title ends in a question mark.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dagmx 6y ago

The current party in power in India is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is akin to removing minimum wage for farmers in a market where it would be financial ruin for most farmers and give way to corporate farms leading the way. The farmers were peacefully protesting and the government has reacted by attacking them quite brutally etc.. recently they've also issued FIRs (effectively arrest warrants) for foreigners who've voiced their support for the farmers on Twitter. Generally the government is trying to keep exposure to these events as low as possible. Twitter is obviously not beholden to their wishes.

Chetan496 6y ago
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.
- mandeepj 6y ago
  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_farmers%27_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme... https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states-that-have-bypassed-farm-laws-1753995-2020-12-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states...
cscurmudgeon 6y ago
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.
- mandeepj 6y ago
  >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.
  - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
    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.
    - mandeepj 6y ago
      > Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence. Have some strength to hear the facts
l0k3ndr 6y ago
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.
- dagmx 6y ago
  To be clear the police did attack the farmers long before republic day. It's a pressure cooker situation right now
  - nonamechicken 6y ago
    Did they actually attack? I haven't come across any news about that.
nell 6y ago
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.
vinay_ys 6y ago
> ...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_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_co...)
bhaskara2 6y ago
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.
- dagmx 6y ago
  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
  - Chetan496 6y ago
    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-suspected-for-farmers-protest-toolkit-tweeted-by-greta-thunberg/599098/ 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+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivwVCKhwNe7OD1YHDiBUj0Y/ 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