Author: Vatsalya Srivastava

The commentary around any policy change in our country, unfortunately, seems to boil down to who understands India better. The resulting discussion often devolves into adversarial claims about the ‘real vs. imagined’, with all sides, of course, claiming the real for themselves. Hence, this article intends to focus more on the drivers of the protests rather than forecasting the possible outcomes of the policy change.

There are over 100 million farmers in India, and no policy is likely to make all of them happy or upset. The protests, therefore, should only be surprising to people who believe that there exist win-win outcomes in which every stakeholder is better off.