Reconceptualising farmer protests

The recent protests have not been confined to landed farmers, but appear to have brought together diverse groups of agriculturalists along with urban youth from rural backgrounds

From Mandsaur to Mumbai and Delhi, in recent times, India’s towns and cities have witnessed a series of extraordinary mobilisations by protesting farmers from across the country. As a result, there has been a renewed policy focus on the two long-standing demands of farmers’ movements: higher minimum support prices (MSPs) and loan waivers. The public debate this time round has been unusually specific — A2+FL vs C2 are now frequently invoked acronyms on TV and op-ed pages when discussing the agrarian crisis. The debate has also focused on a range of policy technicalities from procurement to price-deficiency payments and income