In an upcoming episode of the Kisan podcast we will discuss the contract farming provisions in the new agritrade laws which farmers are opposing.

To give you a summary :

- the laws are intentionally drafted to create what can only be described as neo-colonial estates.

contd/
- this is done by permitting two additional kinds of subcontracting : sharecroppers; sponsors.

- generally, a contract has two parties: farmer and buyer

- in the new laws, a buyer can make a sharecropper responsible for farm labour; a sponsor for providing inputs & services
- so, theoretically a contractor could lease, say, 10,000 acres of land from an x number of farmers

- he can make, say, ten parcels of the land and assign them to sharecroppers

- he can assign an x number of companies to act as service providers
- all these various subcontractors become party to the contract

- now what if there’s a dispute and a farmer wants his small plot of land back, but it’s been assigned to various contractors

- he can only go to the SDM for dispute resolution (and we know how that works)
- what if there is a dispute between any of these parties regarding payment and liabilities?

- the law includes a clause that recoveries can be made as land arrears, and although sale of land without farmers consent is prohibited, transfer of ownership can be frozen
One can understand how complex these laws, contracts and clauses can be for a simple farmer from a village who has limited knowledge and capacity as it is.

We are looking at a likely possibility of various kinds of exploitation. And fears of losing land are not unwarranted.
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