FATEHPUR, India (AP) – Ram Singh Patel’s day begins at 6am, when he enters his farmland hidden next to a railway line. For hours he works on the farm, where he grows peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes and papayas. Sometimes his wife, two sons and two daughters join him to help him or have lunch with him.
Once home after sunset, he packs the crops grown in jute bags and cardboard boxes, ready to be driven by a trailer to a nearby wholesale market where the products are sold.
This is the daily life of Patel, a 55-year-old generational farmer in the state of Uttar Pradesh in central India. Life is laborious and repetitive, but he is an unknown hero who, like millions of other small farmers, cultivates grains to feed the population of more than 1.3 billion people in India.
But lately, Patel has been a worried man. Their earnings have begun to fall. Their children do not want to work on the farm. And he fears that the new agricultural laws introduced by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will favor large corporations that will bring down prices and make family farms unviable, eventually leaving millions like him without land.
“Farmers will survive this attack by any means,” said Patel, who supports Modi but opposes the new laws. “But future generations will have no food because there will be no one to grow grain. What will the prime minister eat then? ”
The famous farmers of India, often called “annadatta” or “suppliers”, have long been considered the heart and soul of a country where the agricultural industry supports more than half of the people. . But farmers have also seen their economic weight decline in the last three decades. Once they accounted for a third of India’s gross domestic product, they now account for only 15% of the country’s $ 2.9 trillion economy.
The new laws that have provoked widespread anger among farmers aggravate their concerns. Tens of thousands have besieged New Delhi, the capital, for nearly a month and have been hiding with food and fuel supplies that can last for weeks. They have threatened not to leave until their demands for the abolition of the laws are met.
The government says the new laws provide much-needed reform for the agricultural sector. Attempts have been made to appease angry farmers, but several rounds of talks have failed to try to end the protests.
Many of the protesting farmers are from the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, two of the largest agricultural states in India. But rumors have now begun to grow in other states as well.
“The Modi government is for the rich,” Patel said. “His government forces us to make these laws when we didn’t even ask for them.”
Laws have exacerbated the existing resentment of farmers, who often complain about being ignored by the government.
“The general public is against these laws,” Patel said. “I don’t understand why the prime minister doesn’t listen to them.”