The New Farm Laws and The 'Annadata' (The One Who Feeds) Conundrum
Indian Culture Has Revered Farmers as 'Annadata' for Ages. Today, It Has Sadly Become the Albatross Hanging Around Their Necks. Plus! A New Field Guide for Navigating Culture Wars in Agriculture.
Dear Friends,
Venky here. Welcome to Agribusiness Matters!
I hope you are enjoying the winters and gearing up for Christmas!
After writing more than 10K+ words on the new Farm Laws, with a four-part essay series, I naively thought I had covered everything I wanted to say.
Part-1:Setting the Context [For subscribers alone] | Part-2: Criticism | Part-3: In Defense of the Government [For subscribers alone]| Part-4: Summing it UpEvent Update: On December 13th, Sunday, 5 PM IST, I will be doing an open webinar, organized by the folks at Digital Futurists Forum, on Farm Bill Politics and the Difficulty of Being Agritech. You can register for the event here.
For now, it looks like Farmers have rejected the earlier proposal to amend the farm laws and have vowed to intensify their agitation until the new farm laws are repealed.
The proposal earlier offered amendments to create a level playing field (Samyata, in the words of Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar) between ‘Trade areas’ (un…