Minimum Support Price, Agrarian Issues and Farmers’ Movement in India

Abstract

Minimum Support Price (MSP) is one of the many important aspects related to agricultural development. Farmers have been demanding MSP for decades, but the demand for legalisation of MSP has been raised prominently by the contemporary farmers movement. On the one hand, farmers had been engaging in protests in Tikri, Singhu (Delhi–Haryana border) and Ghazipur (Delhi–UP border) throughout the year (2020–2021) for legalisation of the MSP. On the other hand, the government is in favour of neoliberal policy and saw the MSP as an agro-ecological and financial risk. This article uses quantitative and qualitative methods to establish a relationship between MSP, agrarian issues and the farmers movement in India. The result shows that the MSP policy has had a very negative impact on agro-ecology and groundwater conditions in Punjab, Haryana and Western UP.