By Dr Vandana Shiva<\/p>\n
India is today the oldest living agrarian civilization.\u00a0 Indian farmers constitute some 20-25% of all peasant farmers in the world. Every freedom struggle of India has been peasant led, from the 1857 uprising against the East India Company<\/a>, the Champaran Satyagraha<\/a> in 1917 led by Gandhi against forced cultivation of Indigo, the uprising of Indian peasants<\/a> and violence in Punjab in 1984, to today\u2019s year-long protest<\/a> by Indian Farmers against three farm acts passed in September 2020.<\/p>\n Corporate Globalisation \u2013 today\u2019s Recolonization<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n In the mid 1960\u2019s the World Bank and US government imposed the high-cost chemical based Green Revolution<\/a>, based on industrial chemical inputs.\u00a0 By the 1990\u2019s India had a 90 billion debt, as a result of the structural adjustment package imposed on India by the World Bank in 1991, with one third of the debt related to loans for the Green Revolution infrastructure.\u00a0 The Dunkel Draft Text of the ongoing GATT negotiations led to the creation of\u00a0 the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 which brought into force the present rules of Corporate Free Trade<\/a> which small farmers of India have been protesting<\/a> against for more than three decades.<\/p>\n The 1991 Structural Adjustment<\/a> included conditionalities to dismantle the Essential Commodities Act to prevent hoarding of food grain and speculation. India had lived through the Great Bengal Famine of 1492 which killed 2 million people, not for lack of rice, but for the greed of the empire. I call the Essential Commodities Act the Prevention of Famine Act, by putting restrictions on corporate greed.<\/p>\n Structural Adjustment and Corporate Free Trade are systems of Disregulation \u2013 they use the coercive power of International Financial Institutions and big corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Pepsi to dismantle the regulations sovereign countries have put in place to uphold their Food Sovereignty. The destruction of democratic, public regulations translates into corporate rule. Corporate Globalisation is Recolonisation and the return of \u201ccompany Raj\u201d.<\/p>\n The year-long protest of Indian Farmers led to our Parliament and farmers movements preventing the implementation of the corporate agenda being imposed by the World Bank and WTO.\u00a0 It reminded the world that agriculture is not an industry or commerce, it is care for Mother Earth, growing food for society, the highest and most essential form of livelihood, with freedom and dignity.\u00a0 Food is not a commodity produced for the profit of corporations, but the very basis of life.<\/p>\n India has had a diversity of markets, from local village Haats to the regional \u201cmandis\u201d which have been regulated by the APMC Act<\/a> (Agriculture Produce Market Committee) through the Essential Commodities Act (ECA). Besides giving farmers access to local markets and guaranteeing a fair price, the act puts limits on hoarding and speculation. I call the APMC Act an Act guaranteeing fair trade.<\/p>\n The World Bank conditionalities wanted this Act dismantled so as to create corporate monopolies. It also wanted to end the regulation of land holding through land laws that protect the rights of small farmers in order to create a regime of corporate concentration over the land.<\/p>\n The World Bank conditionalities and WTO rules have undermined India\u2019s civilisation ethic of \u201cAnnadata Sukhi Bhava\u201d where contented farmers are one and the same as contented consumers.\u00a0 Neoliberal reforms<\/a> focusing on corporate profits alone have not just led to a deep existential crisis for the farmers by threatening their lives and livelihoods, a crisis of the food and farming system has also created a hunger emergency with every fourth Indian driven to hunger, and every second child suffering from severe malnutrition. The dismantling of the Essential Commodities Act allows traders to hoard food grain and speculate on food prices. Hoarding allows corporate monopolies to emerge. Farmers are exploited through low prices of purchase of farmers produce. Citizens are exploited by rising food prices.<\/p>\n Farmers\u2019 protests enforce Parliamentary democracy<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Parliamentary democracy combined with people\u2019s democratic movements prevented the implementation of the World Bank Corporate Agenda.<\/p>\n In September 2020, During Covid and the Lockdown, 3 laws were introduced<\/a>, implementing the World Bank Agenda:<\/p>\n For a whole year, thousands of farmers gathered at the Delhi borders and started a protest<\/a> to demand a repeal of the 3 laws which spell a death knell of India\u2019s small farmers and are a threat to India\u2019s good sovereignty.<\/p>\n More than 600 farmers became martyrs during the year-long farm struggle, which I define as the Third Movement of India\u2019s Freedom and which shows a path to Food Freedom for all of humanity. The courage, the organisation, creativity of nonviolent resistance, the solidarity and unity, and the tirelessness of the farmers’ struggle has lessons for every movement in every country. This is a movement not just for farmers’ freedom. It is a movement in defense of human freedom.<\/p>\n The strength of the farmers movement forced the Government on 19 November 2021 to announce a repeal of the 3 laws<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n