By Matters India Reporter

New Delhi: A Jesuit food rights activist on October 20 welcomed the farm bills passed by the legislative assembly of Punjab state in northern India.

“I welcome this move wholeheartedly. Democracy is dancing with joy,” Father Irudaya Jothi, a convener of the Right to Food and Work in West Bengal.

He made the remarks soon after Punjab become the first state to formally reject and counter the three controversial farm laws passed by the federal government in September amid unprecedented chaos in parliament.

Father says the federal government passed the farm bills arbitrarily and with brute majority in parliament. However, it has to rethink and accept the center-state relationship and learn to respect the federal system “that is the beauty of India,” he told Matters India.

He also says any constitutional abiding citizen will approve the Punjab government’s move and expresses the hope that the Indian president will sign it. “Hopefully many states will do the same or they face people’s resent,” he warns.

The legislative assembly of Punjab took only a few minutes to first approve a resolution against the federal farm laws. It then introduced and cleared three bills – each of which is designed to counter one of the federal laws.

The three bills cleared by the Punjab Assembly today are – Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Special Provisions and Punjab Amendment Bill 2020; the Essential Commodities (Special Provisions and Punjab Amendment) Bill 2020; and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services (Special Provisions and Punjab Amendment) Bill 2020.

One bill allows authorities to impose fine and a jail term of not less than three years on any individual who buys, or sells, wheat or paddy below the government-mandated MSP (minimum support price) – the alleged removal of MSPs, as claimed by critics of the federal laws, was one of the biggest flash-points in farmers’ protests that took place across the country.

The bill adds that any one harassing farmers to sell below the MSP will be punished too.

Another bill prevents hoarding and black-marketing of food grains, while farmers with holdings of up to 2.5 acres are offered relief against their land being attached.

Shortly before the counter-bills were passed Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said he was “not afraid of resigning” and would not let “farmers suffer or be ruined.”

Punjab has emerged as the epicenter of protests against the federal farm laws, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi leading tractor rallies in the state.

In September Congress chief Sonia Gandhi asked states where the party was in power to bring in laws to overrule the ones passed by the federal government. The constitutional rule she referred to allows state legislatures to enforce laws “repugnant to the parliament law,” if they get presidential approval.

The three counter-bills passed by the Punjab Assembly now require Governor VP Singh Badnore’s assent before they become law.

Critics of the federal laws have said it will rob farmers of access to a minimum support price – guaranteed sale prices that are a source of credit in hard times like droughts and crop failure, and removal of which will severely impact small and marginal farmers.

Critics have also pointed out that the entry of private players – facilitated by the federal laws allowing farmers to sell to institutional buyers rather than to a middleman at a government-controlled wholesale market – will weaken farmers’ bargaining powers and affect, once again, smaller and marginal farmers.

The government has insisted that by removing any barrier to inter- and intra-state trade of farm and agricultural produce, it is empowering farmers to sell their goods at markets and prices of their choice.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly assured farmers that MSPs will not be scrapped, but verbal assurances have done little to ease concerns.