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2020 Farm Bill India - discussion.


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Just now, coffee_rules said:

Back to this thread, as the otherone is hijacked by vested interests. This is a sorry move by the government. It will turn states into waterless deserts. Sugar prices are falling down world over, no point in giving subsidies to grow sugar. Idiotic move by BJP

 

 

 

Maybe a Sharad Pawar appeasement scheme?  Makes no sense.  

 

I saw the below video yesterday on one of my SM groups.  If this works, Govt should tie subsidy to use of something like this:

 

 

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On 11/3/2020 at 1:16 AM, Mariyam said:

@Tibarn

 

By retroactive taxation, do you mean retrospective taxation? In the context of India it is called retrospective taxation.

Yes, it's called retrospective in all the countries with similar laws I think, but I only remembered the prefix when I was typing, so I went with the first word that came to mind. :(( 

 

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Re: CSR;  Could you expand on your point please.

What about CSR do you not agree with? That it is legally mandatory now or the need ( ethically/principally) of a company to indulge in CSR activities? Or both?

Both:

 

1)

Legally mandating CSR activities is basically just another tax on companies; they could instead invest the money to expand their businesses and create jobs. It also serves as a disincentive for any corporates who may want to shift manufacturing to India, if this or another hare-brained law applies to them. If they want to invest in society themselves, they are free to do so. What is the need for a mandate by netas?    

 

It is also a case of The Gormint passing the buck to businesses to do their job for them, ie building hospitals. The Gormint should spend less money on pointless sops/subsidies for political expediency/votes and use the tax money they already get on Edu/Military/Healthcare instead of passing the buck to businesses. If The Gormint wants corporate investment in those areas, it's better to deregulate those areas and make it easier for private players to invest in them. If something is profitable, businesses-organizations will anyway look to expand into those areas. There's no need for slimy laws like these. 

 

2)

I also don't think companies have any moral obligation to "contribute to society" in the way that these dimwit netas deem appropriate. Companies already provide jobs and income to so many people, as well as increasing the overall wealth of the country. It falls in line with the idea that "evil corporates" are "stealing" resources from the common man, one of the dumbest ideas that Indians have been brainwashed with over the decades by the various Socialist loons India has had in charge since Independence. 

 

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A nice research paper by Niti Aayog from 2015-16 regarding farming in India. (It's 46 pages long, but it deals with various areas of agriculture in India).

https://niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2019-07/RAP3.pdf

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Raising Agricultural Productivity and Making Farming Remunerative for Farmers*

 

The portion on MSP

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India introduced price interventions in food grain market beginning in the mid-1960s as a part of its efforts to make the Green Revolution a reality. Since then, agricultural price policy has aimed to offer remunerative prices to producers through a system of minimum support prices (MSP) backed by procurement of grain, minimize short-run and year to year price fluctuations through open market operations and distribute food grains at subsidized prices through public distribution system (PDS). The policy has been partially responsible for rapidly rising output of wheat and rice. Acute food grain shortages that had prompted the Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shashtri to call upon all Indians to fast one day each week in the mid 1960s are now a thing of the past. Instead, the country now routinely runs grain surplus, which is exported.

 

Nevertheless, the system of price intervention has come under serious criticism in recent years (Chand 2005, 2009). While instrumental in alleviating food grain shortages, the price policy of the past four and a half decades has also distorted the cropping pattern between wheat and rice supplies on the one hand and other crops on the other. While the government currently announces MSP for 23 crops, procurement is effective mainly for wheat, rice and cotton and even for these crops, it is restricted to a subset of farmers in a few States. Sugarcane is another crop where millers are under legal obligation to pay statutory minimum price fixed by various states. The result has been excessive focus on the cultivation of wheat, rice and sugarcane in the procurement states at the expense of other crops such as pulses, oilseed and coarse grains. While rice and wheat have had to be either stored in excessive volumes for excessively long periods or exported at the taxpayer’s expense, the country has faced shortages in pulses and edible oils. Despite significant volume of imports, prices of pulses have seen frequent spikes. Moreover, inclusive of imports, per capita availability of pulses, a major source of protein in Indian diet, suffered a decline from 25.2 kg in 1961 to 18.7 kg in 1971, and 15.3 Kg more recently. In the case of oilseeds India’s dependence on import has risen to 60 per cent of domestic consumption. Policy induced changes in production pattern towards rice and wheat have also put strain on natural resources. Intensive cultivation of these two cereals has resulted in depletion of water resources, soil degradation and deterioration in water quality in some states, especially in the north-western region.

 

In parallel to these developments, the pricing policy has also discriminated against eastern states where procurement at the MSP is minimal or non-existent. With part of the demand in these states satisfied by subsidized PDS sales of the grain procured in other states, prices of wheat and rice in these states end up below what they would be in the absence of price interventions of the government. The price policy has thus also created a regional bias in crop pattern as well as incomes of farmers.

 

Therefore, there is pressing need for reorientation of price policy if it is to serve the basic goal of remunerative prices for farmers. This goal cannot be achieved through procurement backed MSP, however, because it is neither possible nor desirable for the government to buy each commodity in each market in all regions. Financial cost of such a policy would place fiscal consolidation at risk and administrative burden would put challenge the capacity of the bureaucracy.

 

One measure that can help check the prices received by farmers to some degree is the system of “Price Deficiency Payment”. While MSP may still be used for need-based procurement, under the deficiency payments system, a subsidy would be provided on other targeted produce in case the price falls below a pre-specified assured threshold. This approach would help prevent unwanted stocks and spread price incentives to producers in all the regions and all the crops considered important for providing price support. Under the system, the government would announce a floor price for each crop. This floor may be the average of the market price in the preceding three or four years. Each farmer would register her crop and acreage sown with the nearest APMC mandi. If the market price then fell below the floor price, the farmer would be entitled to the difference up to a maximum of, say, 10% of the assured price that could be paid via direct benefit transfer into an Aadhar linked bank account. This system would keep the quantum of the subsidy in some check and also meet the restrictions on the subsidy imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The system can initially be piloted in selected districts in a few states in a crop such as cotton in which price discovery is institutionalised. Satisfactory implementation would require transparent land-leasing laws and land records so that the actual cultivator and her plot of land can be identified and given the payment due.

 

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There goes any goodwill built by protesters, if there was any credibility in their grievances.

 

Some nasty footage already on news channels.

 

One where group of farmers hitting a lone woman police officer.

 

So I guess the next riposte will be, these weren't farmers these were Ambani's staff masquerading as farmers and acting violent :hysterical:

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, jf1gp_1 said:

So a question, we arent able to manage unruly farmers how do we plan to counter Chinese ?

 

If this was a strategy to show how bad it looks for the Nation capital to burn, to let the Khalistani flag on lal Qila flutter is a failure of democracy, it is not a good strategy to bend down and show weakness. 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, coffee_rules said:

 

If this was a strategy to show how bad it looks for the Nation capital to burn, to let the Khalistani flag on lal Qila flutter is a failure of democracy, it is not a good strategy to bend down and show weakness. 

 

 

 

 

I feel disgusted. Such an insult to the great nation. Any chance, ever so slightest if existed, the opposition parties have completely installed BJP to the power for many decades.

 

Nobody is going to trust opposition ever. What is the idea behind changing a flag on Red Fort. Thats the pride of our nation. Flag is representation of 1.3b people. Are oppositions even worth for their existence?  

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