FEMALE farmers staged thousands-strong rallies in many Indian states on Monday calling for the repeal of pro-corporate agricultural laws.

January 18 was declared Women Farmers’ Day in India and a range of women’s organisations staged rallies and tractor parades demanding the Narendra Modi government reverse the laws, which lift price controls on essential crops and allow private stockpiling and unregulated cross-state sale of foods.

A joint statement issued by the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (Aidwa), the National Federation of Indian Women, All-India Progressive Women’s Association and others read: “The Modi government has launched a full-scale attack on the survival of a large section of our population.

“The three farm laws will further worsen the situation for women whose lives are already facing a severe crisis due to skyrocketing prices of essential commodities.”

Mariam Dhwale, general secretary of Aidwa, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M’s) women’s front, said: “Seventy per cent of agricultural work is done by women. The Essential Commodities Act has totally finished the public distribution system [which supplies essential foods at subsidised prices].

“This will increase hunger and starvation and the main target will be women and girls.”

Ms Dhwale also pointed out that the Contract Farming Act “will clearly put the women farmers at the mercy of the contractors,” increasing the scope for companies to tie farmers into arrangements where they plant seeds provided by a firm and sell exclusively to it.

Major US companies including Pepsi are involved in contract farming in India.

Farmers have blockaded the capital New Delhi since late November, declining pleas from the Modi administration to return home with promises to “review” the legislation.

India’s Supreme Court has ordered a pause to implementing the laws, but farmers have refused to disperse. 

CPI-M website People’s Democracy noted that the stay is “not linked to any further hearing on the substantive issues” but would simply establish an “expert committee” to report back in two months, and that the court explicitly stated that it should “encourage the farmers’ bodies to convince their members to get back to their livelihoods.”

Interpreting this as a request to the farmers to “give up their protest and go home,” it welcomed the decision by farmers’ organisations to reject the “expert committee” and maintain their blockade for the full repeal of the laws.