Does India Need A Law To Safeguard The Interests of Farmers?

Farmers are always facing a recession in agriculture. As earnings are not enough for living farmers to have to abandon farming to go to the city to do anything that does not require any skill but still brings higher income than farming. In our country, the people who live on agriculture account for 70% of the national population. At least 80% of working age people work in the agricultural sector but they generate less than 20% of country’s GDP.

Their part of the story is never heard by the people, the agony, the miseries, the sufferings and the sacrifices they make. Everyone in the world takes advantage of them. Every day we have a news of farmers committing suicide. One primary cause of their suicide is the sale of spurious and expired pesticides. The big companies procure pesticides for which laws are set. Later on, whatever mishap takes place is faced by the representatives, not the company faces.

But the government has also taken many measures to safeguard the rights of farmers. It enacted Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Right Act 2001, an act of Parliament for the establishment of an effective system for protection of plant varieties, the rights of farmers and plant breeders and to encourage the development and cultivation of new varieties of plants. This act was enacted to grant the rights to plant breeders, farmers who developed any new or extract plant varieties. Under this act, the farmers are free to save, sow, re-sow, exchange or sell their farm products including seed of a registered variety in an unbranded manner.

Yogi Adityanath the CM of Uttar Pradesh, has taken various steps to uplift the grave and pitiable position of farmers. Rs. 1 lakh taken by small and marginal farmers will be waived. He also cited work for extending the health services, standard of education, providing uniforms to the farmers family.

Even after so many measures, the life of a farmer is cumbersome and full of struggles. Because the majority of the ratio is of farming in our country. The government strictly needs to implement many provisions for safeguarding the lives of the farmers because they are the major assets of the country.