India Farm Bills 2020- Return to the Days of Champaran Struggle

S N Sahu
The
country is passing through a deepening and alarming COVID crisis caused by
failure of the Union Government to deal with it through robust public policy measures.
This crisis has been preceded by a more lingering crisis manifested in NDA
regime's calculated denial of scrutiny of legislative proposals in Parliament on
a non-partisan basis. It is being intensified for the last six years by employing
crude majority strength in the Lok Sabha.
The
stubborn stand taken by the regime in the Rajya Sabha on 21st September
2020 against the initiative of opposition parties including Biju Janata Dal to
refer the farm Bills- Farmers’
Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and the
Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm
Services Bill, 2020- to a Select Committee of the House for
better scrutiny and examination is reflective of its unwillingness to subject
those Bills to deeper levels of deliberation and consultation eschewing party
perspectives.
It
is well accepted proposition in a parliamentary democracy that law making is a
deliberative and consultative process. When the NDA regime willfully went
against the parliamentary convention of referring Bills to Department related to Parliamentary Standing Committees of Parliament for scrutiny and examination
right after it assumed office in 2014, it harshly struck at the root of
deliberative and consultative process. Neither the farm bills nor the earlier
Bills such as the Constitution Amendment Bill abrogating special status for
Jammu and Kashmir and Bills concerning Citizenship Amendment , Triple Talaq and Unlawful Activities
Prevention Bill were referred to any of
Committees of Parliament for in-depth deliberation on a non partisan basis by
taking into account inputs from a variety of stake holders. In the absence of
such in-depth deliberation free from party perspectives the Bills or
legislative proposals suffers from deficit of legislative scrutiny.
The
crude majority of the ruling party in the Lok Sabha and the cobbling up of
numbers in the Rajya Sabha enables it to pass legislations without thread bare
discussion and critical analysis of their provisions. As a result of serious
deficiency of scrutiny such Bills when become Acts lack sufficient reasoning and
rationale for meriting wider public acceptance.
On
16th January 1948 Mahatma Gandhi had thoughtfully said, "No Cabinet worthy
of being representative of a large mass of mankind can afford to take any step
merely because it is likely to win the hasty applause of an unthinking public.
In the midst of insanity, should not our best representatives retain sanity and
bravely prevent a wreck of the ship of State under their management?"
Avoiding Parliamentary Scrutiny
The lack of sanity
reflected in pushing numerous legislations in the Parliament by the NDA regime
from 2014 onwards by avoiding parliamentary
scrutiny on a bipartisan basis in parliamentary committees has become a new
normal negating the very basis of parliamentary democracy. Sanity demands that before legislations on
sensitive subjects are taken up in the Parliament for discussion and passage, the ruling regime should necessarily mobilize public opinion in their
favour so that people would accept them willingly and conducive atmosphere
would be created for their effective implementation. That is why it is said
that better scrutiny leads to better governance.
The farm bills were
neither referred to the concerned Department related to parliamentary standing
committees nor were they referred to the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha as
suggested by the opposition parties for scrutiny and examination. The statement
of Agriculture Minister who piloted these Bills in the Rajya Sabha that there
was no need to refer these bills to Select Committee of the House because these
are small Bills sounds so hollow. In the absence of scrutiny and examination of
Bills at the Committee level the vital ingredients involving wider deliberation
and consultation are completely absent. Therefore, the protests by farmers in
many parts of India against these Bills even before these were taken up in the Parliament
clearly indicated public resentment against the Government neglecting scrutiny
and examination of legislations which aim at deeply impacting their ways of
disposal of their agricultural products. It means that these Bills passed by
the Parliament lack support from the public because its views and opinion were
never factored while formulating them. It clearly establishes the point that
law making process when dictated by crude majority of the ruling regime would
fail to command the willing support of people.
It is instructive that
in pre-independent India there were occasions when the colonial authorities
used to refer Bills to committees of legislatures for nuanced discussion and
deliberation before it became the law of the land. The most glaring instance
was the Champaran Agrarian Bill of 1917 which was framed by the British
authorities after Mahatma Gandhi launched his historic Champaran
Satyagraha in 1917 to abolish forcible cultivation of indigo on the land of
farmers at the dictation of British planters. At the heart of that momentous
Satyagraha remained the deliberation and consultation on the part of Mahatma
Gandhi with farmers, British planters, colonial bureaucracy, police and ordinary
people. It is instructive that Champaran Satyagraha which began with Gandhi
breaking the law ended with the framing of law to put an end to forcible
plantation of indigo. And when the framing of law began and Champaran Agrarian
Bill was formulated and introduced in the Bihar-Odisha Legislative
Assembly many members of the Assembly demanded for its reference to
the Select Committee of the House for scrutiny and examination. The British
Government conceded it and even Mahatma Gandhi was requested to examine the
Bill.
Reminder of Champaran Struggle
It is indeed tragic
that hundred and three years after Champaran Satyagraha the NDA Government is
sabotaging legislative scrutiny of farm Bills and using its crude majority to
pass them disregarding the principles of parliamentary oversight which is indispensable for fine tuning Bills
and improving its depth and content.
The passage of the
farm Bills in the Rajya Sabha by voice vote and the request of the opposition
to the Deputy Chairman to put the Bills to voting and failure of the Deputy
Chairman to do so clearly prove the point that procedure for passage of the
Bills have been violated. Such procedural lapse is subversion of democracy. The
need of the hour is to restore the culture of deliberative and consultative
process of law making and salvage the democratic process in the Parliament -
the apex representative body in the constitutional scheme of Governance.
RECOMMENDED NEWS