[Marxistindia] Rescind These Ordinances

[news from the cpi(m)]

June 4, 2020

Press Statement

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued  
the following statement:

Rescind These Ordinances

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) strongly opposes the three ordinances  
approved by the Union Cabinet yesterday regarding agriculture.

The proposed amendments to the Essential Commodities Act removes all  
regulations over the pricing and availability of key agricultural  
commodities essential for the country’s food security. These proposals  
pave the way to create artificial shortages due to speculation by  
middlemen and traders adversely affecting the country’s food security.  
Further, these amendments, by removing all restrictions and providing  
“barrier free inter-state and intra-state” sale of agricultural  
produce pave the way for contract farming by promoting trade and  
commerce outside the premises or markets covered under the  
Agricultural Produce Market Committees (mandis). Licences for  
electronic trading will pave the way for speculative forward trading  
in all agricultural commodities. These open the way for the entry of  
big mulitnational agrobusiness and domestic corporates to freely  
access India’s agricultural produce and markets.

These Cabinet proposals come at a time when agrarian distress is  
worsening due to the pandemic and the national lockdown. At a time  
when our farmers require greater protection, these measures will lead  
to the abandonment of ensuring procurement at a reasonable minimum  
support price.

The net gainer of all these amendments would be the middlemen, traders  
and financial intermediaries who will squeeze both the producer, the  
farmer, and the consumer. This is a recipe for the total destruction  
of whatever little of the public distribution system that is left.

It is obnoxious that the Agriculture Minister chose to describe these  
ordinances as the ‘real freedom’ of the farmers. He claimed that while  
the country got independence in 1947, the farmers had not.  The  
decisions of successive governments of independent India, however  
limited they may have been, relatively protected both the farmers and  
the food security of the country for many years after independence.  
The aggressive pursuit of neo-liberal reforms by the Modi government  
is threatening to bring back the days of ruthless exploitation under  
the British rule for the Indian farmers.

The PB of the CPI(M) is of the firm opinion that these ordinances  
cannot come into force until  the parliament deliberates and  
legislates on it. The due process of scrutiny by the parliamentary  
standing committee on agriculture must be done before these are  
enacted as laws.

Importantly, Agriculture is a state subject under the Indian  
Constitution. The Union Cabinet has approved these ordinances without  
consulting the elected state governments. This is a gross violation of  
our Constitution. Even if the parliament considers and legislates on  
it, this must be subject to the approval of the state legislatures and  
cannot be unilaterally imposed by the Centre.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) demands that these ordinances be  
immediately rescinded.




For CPI(M) Central Committee Office