India: Farmers Struggle to Survive Amid Rising Private Investment
India: Farmers Struggle to Survive Amid Rising Private Investment
Rising food prices have sparked protests in India and elsewhere in the developing world. But, according to humanitarian group Oxfam, costs are increasing because of a new menace
On Wednesday, tens of thousands of landless farmers lined up in Gwalior, a city in northern India, and started a very long walk. Under a flapping canopy of green-and-white flags, demonstrators from several Indian states vowed to spend the next three weeks marching over 320 km from this fort town to New Delhi. They are taking to the road to demand the right to land for shelter and growing food, something they say countless rural Indians have been losing to powerful private players.
The demonstration kicked off just as the U.N. is poised to announce new global food prices. Food prices have been on a steady upward trajectory for years, a worrying development in light of the deadly 2008 riots that broke out in over 30 countries and added tens of millions of people to the world’s list of chronically hungry. Less than three years later, high food prices again helped spark the unrest that unfolded into revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East in the winter of 2011. And again today, after a drought badly affected crops, corn and wheat are more expensive than they were when the Arab Spring got into full swing. Some analysts warn that it means more unrest is on the way.
Indians too are feeling the crunch of higher food prices, though for slightly different reasons. India is not a major food importer and has plenty of its own grain stocks despite a less-than-stellar monsoon. (Why so many Indians are going hungry, then, is another question.) That has traditionally insulated domestic food prices from fluctuations in the global market, and yet food prices in the country too have been on the rise, partly as a result of more speculation tied to the global food market. According to recent World Bank figures published in the Hindu, India recorded the second highest spike in wheat prices after Sudan in the year ending in July 2012.