Farmers Protest Vance’s Visit, Opening of India to US Farm Produce

Thousands of farmers and working-class people in cities and villages across India took to the streets on Monday, April 21 to protest the visit of US Vice President JD Vance. They claim he has come to finalize an agreement which will be a disaster for India’s agriculture and small industries.

Vance arrived in New Delhi on Monday on a four-day tour in the country. As per the reports, the primary agenda of his visit is to finalize a trade agreement between the two countries. The talks over the agreement have been ongoing since the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in February.

“Vance, go back!”

The protesters gathered in villages and district headquarters across India with posters and banners denouncing the Indian government’s failures to safeguard their interests and chanting slogans such as “Vance go back,” and “India is not for sale!” In some places protesters also burned effigies of Vance.

Left-leaning All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the largest farmers’ group in the country, issued a statement on April 18 in which it asked all its units to launch the Vance go back campaign and to oppose the proposed trade agreement with the US. It called the agreement a surrender of India’s interests.

The AIKS statement claimed that Vance’s visit to India “is a part of putting pressure upon the state of India and the corporate-led ruling classes to surrender the national interests to facilitate windfall profiteering to the multinational companies.”

“The Indian prime minister has capitulated to the dictates of the US president Donald Trump and is going ahead with the plans to ease tariff and non-tariff barriers for US products, including farm products,” the statement claimed.

Trump announced a 26% tariff on all Indian exports to the US on April 3 under his administration’s so-called reciprocal tariff regime. Though the imposition of new tariff rates was postponed for three months, Trump has long claimed that India’s tariff regime is unfair to US products, accusing it of blocking access to its markets.

Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, has specifically claimed that India will not be allowed to have closed agricultural markets. He had claimed that opening India’s agriculture sector for American farm products was a central objective of the proposed trade deal.

Surajit Mazumdar, Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) at India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Peoples Dispatch however that, the argument that “the US is losing out because of its relations with India” is perverse. “If you consider India and compare it with the United States in per capita income terms India is about 5% of the US. The US is an advanced economy, India is relatively still a poor underdeveloped economy.”

Disaster for Indian farmers and small industries

AIKS claims opening India’s farm sector to US farm products will harm Indian agriculture – already in a years-long crisis – and affect millions of farmers and their families. Any deal of the nature described by US officials would mean death for India’s dairy industry in particular, AIKS claimed.

“The on-going trade negotiations is a deliberate move so that cheaper cotton, soybean, maize, apple etc. from the US can be dumped in India, literally swamping the market. This will lead to a price crash for Indian farmers,” AIKS claimed.

AIKS claims such a deal would negatively affect the Indian farmers’ struggle against the government’s attempt to introduce corporate interests in agriculture. It also raised concerns that if US farm products flood Indian markets, pushing for a legal minimum support price (MSP) for Indian farm products would become much more difficult.

Vijoo Krishnan, general secretary of AIKS and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), claimed in a video message on Sunday that, if the trade agreement with the US goes as planned, it will further intensify the crisis of Indian agriculture, increasing farmers’ indebtedness.

“In the last few years over 150,000 farmers have committed suicide due to indebtness, this phenomena may increase in the coming days” if we fail to stop the trade agreement with the US, Krishnan claimed.

AIKS also warned that the impact of India’s surrender to Trump’s tariff war will not be limited to the agriculture sector. “The interests of the MSMEs (Medium, Small, and Micro Enterprises) across sectors like generic pharmaceuticals to auto parts and millions of workers across these sectors are also going to be adversely hit.”

It urged the Indian government to stand up – like countries such as China, Canada, and Mexico have done – to safeguard the interest of India’s working classes and farmers, and to push back resolutely against Trump’s tariffs war instead of surrendering the national interest without a fight.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch