After about a year of farmers’ protests, India has finally taken the decision to repeal its free-market reforms.

"Today I have come to tell you, the whole country, that we have decided to withdraw all three agricultural laws," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement addressing the nation. "In the parliament session starting later this month, we will complete the constitutional process to repeal these three agricultural laws."

"I appeal to all the farmers who are part of the protest... to now return to your home, to your loved ones, to your farms, and family," referring to the Indian farmers who have been camping out in the piercing cold in protest against becoming at the mercy of conglomerates. 

Indian farmers revolt against the privatization of agriculture

For about a year now, tens of thousands of farmers, most of whom are from Punjab and Haryana, have protested three reformist laws aimed at radically privatizing the agricultural sector. 

The first drives farmers to sell their produce to private companies and traders at cheap prices only to be sold at more expensive ones in the market. The second bill allows farmers to enter contract farming agreements with customers at predetermined prices and provide local dispute settlement mechanisms. The third law is to minimize the involvement and authority of the government in regulating the prices of the commodities. 

Agriculture and farming pose as the prime source of livelihood for 58% of India’s 1.6 billion-person population, and it contributes to about 15% of the Indian economy. 

The farmers' year-long protest was in refusal of the corporatization of the agricultural sector, thus driving the well-being of millions of Indian farmers, through empirical evidence, into a calamity. 

One of the main concerns behind the reformist laws is that with the minimal involvement of the government and their laws, which have provided protective barriers for Indian farmers for decades, in the reforms, there is no mention of MSPs, or minimum support prices, which addresses the government’s safety net on prices. Corporates, to make profits, typically act to set prices that will drive the workers into poverty to maximize profit. 

“Anecdotal evidence shows that free-market prices are generally lower than the designated MSPs. Farmers fear that corporatizing procurement would lead to lower prices,” Kunal Kundu, India economist at Societe Generale, told CNBC.

Seeds, fertilizers, and machinery are already provided by private companies. According to Kundu, data suggests that the pace of increase of the crops' cost of production is faster than the increase of the prices of the crops themselves.