Name: Kumaraswamy C & L. P. Raju
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume No: 10, Issue No: 2, Year: 2025 (Special Issue)
Page Number: 182-187
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18887111

ABSTRACT
India has an agricultural economy, with the agriculture sector providing jobs for almost half of the country's workforce and accounting for approximately 16 percent of the GDP in the fiscal year 2019-20. India has experienced numerous farmer movements rooted in various issues, with the demands of these movements reflecting both spatial and temporal aspects. Indeed, the farmers' movement in India has deep-rooted origins, tracing back to the colonial era when agriculturalists across various regions of
India protested against Zamindars, landlords, British colonial authorities, and feudal lords. These movements arose due to intense exploitation, oppression, deprivation of land rights, introduction of new taxes, and altered agrarian relationships between farmers and the Colonial government or feudal lords. Many of the challenges that the farmers engaged in were either linked to the nationalist struggle or separate from it. All these challenges led the farmers to join the nationalist movement. A notable leader who mobilized the farmers within a political party was Chaudhury Charan Singh, India's former Prime Minister. He arranged several rallies addressing topics like price equality between industrial and agricultural goods; permitting the import of agricultural inputs from overseas, decreasing industry protection, ensuring farmers are adequately represented in various boards and committees, providing subsidies for electricity, water, fertilizer, seeds, lessening the income gap between urban and rural populations, creating Kisan Banks, and setting up agricultural polytechnics, among others.
In the 1980s, India witnessed the start of the 'New Farmers' Movement' across various regions. The causes included unfavorable trade conditions for agriculture, decreasing purchasing power, unsatisfactory prices, many farmers leaving the agricultural field, rising input costs, and dropping per capita income from farming, among others. It all started in Maharashtra when ‗Shetkari Sanghathana,‘ led by Sharad Joshi, a former UN employee who became a farmer, began protests in the village of Chakan in Pune demanding fair prices for agricultural products, especially onions. Farmers in other
states of India started to implement this sole agenda of profitable prices. In Karnataka, farmers from Navalgund initiated a movement to demand the removal of the ‗betterment levy‘ in the Command Area. This contributed to the establishment of a group named Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha. Prof. Nanjundaswamy, a Law Professor, emerged as its visionary and unquestioned leader. The set of demands would encompass all concerns of farmers. Frequently, the farmers‘ movement would address
concerns like securing fair prices, waiving agricultural loans, opposing government procurement policies, levy policies, and advocating for the liberalization of agricultural policy, among others.

Keywords: Agitation, Exploitation, Fair price, Farmers, Rajya Raitha Sangha, Welfare