Farm reforms remain a challenge yet to be met

The demands of protestors are largely untenable but a paradigm that treats our farmers as captive suppliers to the state must be shifted and farms given freedom to maximize earnings

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Farmer groups from Punjab have seemed bent on a confrontation with the Centre, and Tuesday's clashes with police betrayed no evidence of their backing off. Their threat of storming Delhi-in a replay of earlier farm-bill protests-just before national polls looks like a ploy to maximize bargaining power.

Their list of demands is long, and many of them are untenable. Their call to withdraw from the World Trade Organization and freeze all freetrade pacts, for instance, can be dismissed as over the top. They also want the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 to be reinstated, a pension of ₹10,000 a month for every farmer aged above 60, the limit on rural job-guarantee work-days to be doubled to ₹200, its daily wage upped to ₹700, and the dropping of all cases against last time's protestors. They have other asks as well, but the main one is for a law to back a minimum support price (MSP) for all commodities as a government assurance. This list, though, is not the only reason the agitators could be mistaken for employee unions asking for a better deal.