Free-market economists supported the now-withdrawn farm laws in the belief that they would augment incomes and productivity. Left-leaning e...
Free-market economists supported the now-withdrawn farm laws in the belief that they would augment incomes and productivity. Left-leaning economists opposed the farm laws in the belief that they would make cultivators vulnerable to the whims of big business. For this writer, however, the problem with the farm laws was not so much their content, but the deceitful manner in which they were drafted and passed. In every which way, their enactment into law and the harshness with which the protests by farmers were subsequently met were gross violations of democratic procedure and practice.
The Constitution of India lists agriculture as a state subject. And, yet, so far as one can tell, the three farm laws were drafted without any consultation with the states, not even with states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Indeed, knowing how this government functions, it is very likely that all the drafting was done in the Prime Minister’s Office, with little or no input from cabinet ministers, not even from the Union minister of agriculture.
Unilaterally making decisions which affect hundreds of millions of Indians has been a hallmark of the Narendra Modi government since it took office in May 2014. However, a top-down, one-size-fits-all framework is particularly unwise...
