In short, the bills aim to deregulate farming, which is good for the consumer, but a mixed bag for farmers, particularly those who are beneficiaries of current subsidies and competition restrictions.
Its beneficial for farmers but not middle men, and unfortunately there is a huge propaganda to push back on it. The protests were highly unethical in a time where there is covid and congregating in such groups puts the whole country at risk.
In any case, I hope its not true that they are asking twitter to remove content - free speech is free speech.
Edit: Looks like Twitter went against a legal order, so they are the offending party here:
The social media giant "cannot assume the role of (a) court and justify non-compliance," the government said today in a statement. "Twitter being an intermediary is obliged to obey the directions as per satisfaction of authorities as to which inflammatory content will arouse passion and impact public order. Twitter cannot sit as an appellate authority over the satisfaction of the authorities about its potential impact on derailing public order," the statement read.
Lol... Twitter has already showed that their free speech is not free speech in their platform. If they can censor the free speech of a Head of state, they should be ready to obey directives from a state
Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you're consciously lying.
If this govt was "as totalitarian as it gets", we would be seeing Tiananmen Square kind of things happening. We would see gulags. Opposition parties would be banned, and all opposition leaders jailed / killed.
India is a thriving democracy. It's not perfect, or even well functioning, but it is most certainly democratic.
> Totalitarian regimes are often characterized by extensive political repression, a complete lack of democracy, widespread personality cultism, absolute control over the economy, massive censorship, mass surveillance, limited freedom of movement (most notably freedom to leave the country) and widespread use of state terrorism. Other aspects of a totalitarian regime include the use of concentration camps, repressive secret police, religious persecution or state atheism, the common practice of executions, fraudulent elections (if they take place), possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and potentially state-sponsored mass murder and genocides. Historian Robert Conquest describes a totalitarian state as one which recognizes no limit on its authority in any sphere of public or private life and it extends that authority to whatever length is feasible.
Yep, the incumbent Indian government sounds, looks, feels, acts like totalitarian to me.
I have different opinion on both the issues you raised:
- The new farm bills is absolutely a disaster for indian agriculture as it it tilts the balance of negotiating power completely in favour of the corporates by dergulating the marketplace and making the laws on corporate farming in favour of the corporates.
- In a democratic country, even with an undemocratic government in power like the current one, social media platforms (especially foreign ones), should comply with indian rules and laws.
> Its beneficial for farmers but not middle men, and unfortunately there is a huge propaganda to push back on it. The protests were highly unethical in a time where there is covid and congregating in such groups puts the whole country at risk.
It is decidedly not beneficial for farmers with small land holdings, and most farmers in India are such farmers. The new laws remove legal protection when companies fail to honour farming contracts; the only option now is to approach the Sub-Divisional Magistrates for arbitration, a class of government official that is known primarily for being corrupt. The new laws also remove stockholding limits for private companies (except in the event of an official famine, etc). Incidentally new private godowns came up everywhere months before the laws were passed, almost as if these companies could predict the future.
And propaganda? The Centre spent a fortune on propaganda justifying the new laws. It even showed pictures of "farmers" said to be in support of the new laws who now claim their pictures were used without their consent. Far from being in favour of the bills, they are part of the protests against them. Here: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/protesting-farmer-film...
The Centre claims the laws will give farmers the opportunity to shop around for a better price. The reality is that most Indian farmers are in debt, and can barely afford to transport their produce to the nearest wholesale markets. They can't afford multiple trips. They can't afford to go to a neighbouring state. They have no storage facilities. Their goods are highly perishable. They have to take the price traders will offer, and collusion among traders is extremely common. This is the kind of fortune farmers can expect to make selling to private traders: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bareilly/angry-farm...
All those farmers who are protesting are not doing it out of ideological opposition to the Modi government. They have mostly refused to allow any political party to become part of the protests. They are protesting because they are aware that these laws will result in the government phasing out existing government-run wholesale markets, and then it will be curtains for them.
Edit: now the Government has barricaded in the protestors, cut off their water and food, cut off their Internet and barred any journalists from meeting them.
The benefits of agricultural deregulation is not entirely clear cut.
I quite closely followed the deregulation of the Australian dairy industry (had worked in the industry and still with friends who do) and the outcome 20 years later has not been entirely beneficial for farmers and one might even say only beneficial for the supermarkets. Maybe there's a direct consumer benefit initially through lower prices, but then if the volume of milk production drops, the prices will then likely increase due to lack of supply.
There are days when stern-faced Austarlian politicians sternly caution the supermarket CEOs that their absurdly low milk prices are only just in the realm of the tolerable. It's been years since I last watched one - the theatre has been going on since what, 2011? 2010? Damn the capitalists and their cheap milk.
I find it impressive when they maintain character all the way through the committee hearings. Nobody is going to do anything about very cheap milk.
You are absolutely right. Deregulation and corporate farming is the first step to allow corporates to get a foothold in the agri industry and then slowly takeover and control it.
In both the US and Europe, contract farming has seen the consolidation of farms under few corporates.
> In short, the bills aim to deregulate farming, which is good for the consumer,
Not necessarily. Corporates are not known to be benevolent and will act like cartels to dictate the market price. This bill will endanger India's food security for the poor as deregulation means that corporates will now increasingly dictate the price.
Farmers will suffer because this bill is a huge push to corporatise agriculture through contract farming, in the guise of "reforms".
Repeating what I said elsewhere - In both the US and Europe, contract farming has seen the consolidation of farms under few corporates. Many indian political parties understandably do not want that to happen in india too.
The new farm bills have now opened the gateway to corporates to take over indian farmlands, which will in time, invariably allow foreign corporates to take over them and control India's food security.
>> Lack of statutory support in the bills for the MSP is a major point of concern, especially for farmers from Punjab and Haryana, where 65% of wheat (2019) is procured at MSP by the Food Corporation of India and state agencies.[30] The deregulation of the sugar industry in 1998, which paved the way for private establishments, did not result in a significant improvement in farmers' productivity or incomes.
There are other points of contention per the article as well.
It seems to me the democracy experiment in India can collapse some time in the near future. I have no stake in that race being a total outsider to the problems in that huge and diverse country, but from materials and books I've read things don't look very positive.
Unfortunately, while dictatorships are highly successful in the short run, democracies are required in the long run.
My partner comes from a country with a dictatorship so I see first hand how bad it is to live in an environment where the de facto ruler has full say on everything. You can and will be killed as per their request.
Democracies are bad and the US, India, Europe are all struggling with them, but there are essential for basic rights. Without politicising this thread, one can look at some of the other countries and see how bad life would be in a dictatorship.
Currently dictatorship's are not THAT bad, but that's because they are still competing with democracies. Imagine the whole world under one ruler - they would likely kill large parts of the population. Just as one good ruler can do many good things fast, one bad ruler can do many bad things fast.
I'm from an Eastern European country so I don't need telling on the good/bad sides of dictatorships. The problems with enforcing democracies in places where the populace is not ready for it are apparent worldwide. That's not a jab against democracy per se, but you need the right environment for it.
India is not really in that category since they've been a democracy for a while, but still not long enough to be ingrained in their psyche. They have ethnical and other social issues that few other countries have (at least when it comes to scale).
The 80% what? Hindu majority? I'm actually a minority, but I have the foresight to distinguish between a country that is declining into a dictatorship vs a country that already is. Democracy was non existent in India during the Emergency.
Don't believe everything you read in the media. We had elections in 2019, possibly the freest and definitely the largest elections on the planet. No large scale violence, vote rigging, during the election, no violence after it. The Election Commission is very well-funded, has an army of volunteers and they make sure that citizens even in the remotest of areas get to cast their vote.
There are 1000s of problems in India, but democracy is not one.
Yes, of course not. That's why I didn't believe the Government-sponsored media that claimed there was no rigging at all. One of these pro-Government channels has claimed that Rihanna (the American singer) is a farmer leader and member of the Congress Party (because Rihanna tweeted in favour of the protesting farmers).
> One of these pro-Government channels has claimed that Rihanna (the American singer) is a farmer leader and member of the Congress Party (because Rihanna tweeted in favour of the protesting farmers).
You do realize that this is sarcasm right? I can give you umpteen instances of sarcasm being used in Indian media as a way to ridicule celebrities who just support a cause without knowing anything about it. I still remember how Deepika Padukone was roped in for Anti-CAA protests by giving her a measly 5 crores to just show up at JNU and do her drama.
Are you telling us that Rihanna knows more about Farmer Protests and Farm Laws in India than Indians themselves? It is high time we call out the hypocrisy of the West. Biden Administration is literally moving 30 billion dollars COVID aid reserved for US farmers to fighting climate change[1]. If Rihanna cares so much about the plight of farmers she should focus inwards in her own country. What is even more laughable is that Rihanna supports those Farmers, most of whom come from stubble burning regions of Punjab and Haryana (the ones who directly contribute to massive air pollution in Delhi) [2].
Not for me. There are many people simply against everything the current dispensation does. Election rigging is a serious allegation and must be accompanied with ironclad proof to be considered seriously. If such proof was available, this would have gone to the Supreme Court. Absence of any legal action indicates that these allegations are not credible.
> It seems to me the democracy experiment in India can collapse some time in the near future.
As an indian, I am still optimistic. As these farm protests shows, our democracy still has life despite a government that has scant regard for it.
Despite the hiccups in the past (dismissing of an elected communist government in a state and a short emergency that suspended elections and most democratic rights), democracy has thrived till the last 6 years.
What this government has done is exposed all the huge shortcomings in our democratic institutions that has allowed it to control and dominate it, thus weakening our democracy. As long as we don't allow the current party in power to totally subjugate our democracy (like Hitler did with Germany), we can still repair our democracy.
(As the right-wing in power in US and India showed, democracy in the US is more resilient than India's because the democratic institutions of the US were stronger. This is where India needs to focus. Also note that one of the propaganda of the party in power is to show that democracy is totally dysfunctional in India, because that is the only way they can find support to change the constitution to "fix" it.)
Terrible title to this thread. It's a court order to specifically remove tweets that falsely compare protests to genocide.
The HN thread title "Indian government orders Twitter to remove contents related to farmers protest" suggests it is an Indian government order to remove all content regarding the protests.
It is the government that has requested the court to act:
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Sunday had sought "emergency blocking of 257 URLs and 1 Hashtag under section 69 A of the Information Technology Act," as per an official statement,
I am generally against censorship, but if Twitter wants to be consistent, they should comply. These "protesters" took over Red Fort in New Delhi on Republic Day, quite similar to the riots in the American Capitol building. Many policemen and women were beaten up and pushed into deep ditches. These rioters are egged on by countless woke accounts on Twitter, they are effectively inciting the violence.
Again, if it were up to me, I wouldn't censor a word. But Twitter did huge amounts of banning and censoring in the Capitol's case, so it makes sense for them to do it here. Otherwise this exposes Twitter's behaviour to be nothing but a cover for supporting the owner's politics.
They should definetly take action and comply asap since it puts delicate but biggest democracy is danger. As if they haven't learned anything from the 4 years.
Twitter should safely follow the future FB path of just turning off the algo amplification (recommendations, likes/follower counts) on all political content. Its not a big revenue source anyway and all it seems to produce in terms of outcomes is people attacking each other 24x7.
Let politics happen in the voting booth and parliament.
Ofcourse Narendra Momeme and his fan club owe their rise to social medias algo amplification design, as much as anything else, so its going to be interesting to see where the story goes.
> Ofcourse Narendra Momeme and his fan club owe their rise to social medias algo amplification design, as much as anything else, so its going to be interesting to see where the story goes.
Narendra Modi was 3 times Chief Minister of Gujarat much before Social Media even existed. He was already popular and a seasoned politician. And Congress being the weakest helped him a lot as well.
You can probably attribute Social Media for Arvind Kejriwal's rise to power in Delhi as a more accurate representation of Social Media having direct impact on electoral politics. But to say Modi came to power only because of Social Media is the most ignorant take on Indian Politics.
In short, the bills aim to deregulate farming, which is good for the consumer, but a mixed bag for farmers, particularly those who are beneficiaries of current subsidies and competition restrictions.
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