An Attempt to Modernise Indian Agriculture

Sammanfattning: The Indian agriculture sector plays a vital role in the country's economy and employs a significant number of individuals. The sector's performance has been plummeting in recent years, and this decrease in growth can be attributed to factors such as the provisions provided to farmers by the government. With the introduction of the Farm Laws in the country, the goal was to provide more freedom to the farmers and increase their monthly income by liberating and deregulating the trade practices within the sector. The Laws, however, were met with backlash from the farmers and led to mass protests across the nation where the farmers demanded a repeal of the Laws. This thesis explores the Farm Laws and looks into the factors that led to their failure and whether they were adequate to modernise the Indian agriculture sector. The data collected for this research is via a literature review on the effects of the Farm Laws on the main stakeholders of the policies. The data is then analysed using the analytical framework based on the Karger and Stoesz (2006) policy analysis method, where the policy is examined based on its historical background and problems that necessitated the policy. The results gained from the policy analysis are inspected based on the agriculture protection theory by Swinnen (1994), who argues that there is an increase in agriculture protection when structural changes are brought to the sector, and this increase can be a result of multiple factors. The thesis concludes that Farm Laws failed in India because the farmers' interests were not taken into account, and the very implementation of the policies failed. The government failed to execute the Laws productively, and suggestions for eradicating external factors that torment the sector were not provided in the newly drafted Farm Laws. A political economy perspective is also included in the research to explore the role of the government when it comes to modernising the sector and how they failed to take into account the farmers' struggles in the existing system. Suggestions for future reforms are included that argue for the importance and role of institutions, infrastructure and investments in developing the sector and assisting the farmers in increasing their incomes.