Modi a good speaker, but failed to reach farmers: Gurcharan Das

Economist and writer Gurcharan Das is a great advocate of reforms in the agriculture sector and considers the three new agricultural laws implemented by the Modi government to be quite right.

But according to the author of the famous book named 'India Unbound', the Prime Minister has failed to give the right message to the farmers. They say that Narendra Modi, despite being the world's largest communicator, did not succeed in delivering his message to the farmers.

In a conversation with BBC, he said, "Modi ji's mistake was that he has not sold the reform (reform) properly. Now you have to bear the expense of not selling it. People have taken a position. Now more difficult is."

Citing the example of Chinese economic reformer Deng Xiaoping and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he says that more publicity is needed than implementing economic reform.

He says, "The major reformers in the world, such as Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher, used to say that they spend 20 percent of their time implementing the reform and 80 percent of the time in promoting the reform."

Farmers, especially farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, have been strongly opposed to the three new agricultural laws recently passed by the Modi government and have been on strike outside Delhi in lakhs for a few days. There have been two rounds of talks between his representatives and the government but they have failed. The next conversation is on 5 December.

Farmers want the government to amend the new law related to agriculture to include the minimum support price (MSP) in the law and the law should also have provisions to regulate private companies in the agricultural sector. Farmers also demand that the system of mandis should not be abolished.

The peasant movement continues and the government is definitely under pressure, but what does Gurcharan Das think about the demands of the farmers?

He says, "Yes, their demand is somewhat right, but it (MSP) is not an ideal system. As an economist I would say that it is a cheap system because it has a lot of shortcomings. If I was asked what the system is If it should be, then my answer would be that there should be no concessions and subsidies. Not on fertilizer, not on electricity, not on water and not even on price. You just transfer cash to small and poor farmers every month. You can make it small Can say cash security for farmers. "

He adds, "At the moment a lot of concessions actually have to be paid by those paying taxes".

"Food security or food security is the law of the country. The government will have to provide food grains to the poor and that is why it will run despite not having an ideal system. I think they have created fear. If they were explained from the beginning what happened It has been and that the MSP is not going and the mandis are not going, then the picture would have been something else. "

He said, "My point is that the farmer has a choice. He now has the freedom to say to private companies that we cannot work with you."