Hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers are out on the streets of Delhi today in protest to a series of deregulation measures planned to be enacted by the Indian government on Dec. 9. The farmers marched into the capital from Punjab and Haayana over the last couple of weeks for the protests and have been obstructing traffic into and out of the city. The call for a shutdown on Dec. 8 was supported by scores of trade unions and more than a dozen of India’s opposition political parties.
The legislation would “allow” farmers to sell their products on the open market rather than to government-controlled wholesale markets (“mandis") at fixed prices. The farmers fear that selling on the open market will be at far lower prices which will not allow them to survive. As has also been the case in the U.S., but perhaps on a considerably larger scale, many Indian farmers have committed suicide in the face not being able to provide for themselves and their families. More than 10,000 Indian farmers died by suicide in 2019 alone.
