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What are the methods used by the farmers’ organisations to influence policymakers in India and how effective are these methods?
Approach
It is a direct question. The candidate is expected to enumerate protest and pressuring methods used by farmer organisations to showcase their case and get policy concessions from the government. The answer may be either divided into two parts to explain the effectiveness of the methods as a whole later or the effectiveness of a particular method explained together with the method itself. The candidates are expected to write examples and link current situations to enrich their answer.
Content for Answer
Methods used by farmer’s organizations
Prayers and Petitions
The organisations send letters and petitions to the ministries and other executives of the government to argue their case and get concessions. For example, the representatives may meet ministers and civil servants and submit their demands at the stage of policy formulation or release of the budget.
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Protests and Demonstrations
Protests may take any form – from a peaceful gathering to competing elections against some unpopular politician or even bandhs and hartals. Such methods help get media attention as well as the government’s attention. For eg, recently above 70 farmers filed nominations against a politician to pressure the party to include their demands in the manifesto.
Vote Bank and Pressure group
Farmers form a very big part of our population. They form several homogenous voting groups and pressure groups to put forward their case. For Eg, Kisan Sabhas
Electoral Politics
Often farmers’ organisations directly fight the elections and enter the Parliament and State Assemblies. They try to influence the government policies either supporting the government or pressuring it with the opposition. Ex: Political outfits such as Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathan in Maharashtra
Effectiveness
These methods have only been partially successful and helped the farmers to gain some concessions such as loan waivers and raising of minimum support prices. Since agriculture still remains the major economic activity in India, any government cannot totally ignore farmers needs. But structural reforms are long overdue in the sector. Such major policy decisions have not been achieved through these methods. The loan waivers and assurances normally coincide with elections and later farmer demands are not properly followed up and goes into cold storage. For example, the governments of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan waived loans off immediately after coming to power but failed to follow up it with any real structural reforms in the agriculture sector of the states
