Couldn’t break them with laws, so they were sold out with deals to the Americans! That single line captures the uneasy continuity in India’s agricultural policy over the last few years. When Indian farmers rose up against the three farm laws, they weren’t merely resisting technical reforms. They were blocking what they understood, correctly, as a structural corporate takeover of Indian agriculture. The laws were pushed with unprecedented urgency, defended with open hostility toward dissent, and finally repealed not out of conviction, but exhaustion, after a year-long agitation that shook the country and embarrassed the government globally. That defeat clearly rankled.

Today, under the language of “trade frameworks” and “strategic partnerships,” India’s agricultural markets are being opened to heavily subsidised U.S. farm products. No mass debate. No parliamentary upheaval. No nationwide consultation with those whose lives depend on agriculture. What could not be achieved through domestic law is now being routed through international agreements, quietly, contractually, and with smiles for foreign cameras.

Cheap Imports, Crushing Consequences

This is not a level playing field. American agriculture is industrial-scale, capital-intensive, and backed by massive state subsidies. Indian agriculture, on the other hand, survives on small and marginal farmers, fragmented landholdings, and minimal state support that often arrives late or not at all. Cheap imports don’t merely compete; they crush.

For a farmer cultivating two acres in Punjab, Maharashtra, or Bihar, there is no way to “innovate” fast enough to survive a flood of subsidised foreign produce. The market doesn’t reward patriotism or resilience. It rewards scale and state-backed power. Once prices collapse, the farmer absorbs the shock, not the corporation, not the foreign exporter, and certainly not the policymakers signing the deals.

From Reform to Retribution

Seen together, a troubling pattern emerges. First, attempt control through domestic laws. Fail, then, reroute the same outcome through an international backdoor. This is where the issue moves beyond economics and into politics, specifically political retribution. The message to farmers is chillingly clear. Resist once, and policy will remember.

Political scientists call this policy bypassing, when elected governments circumvent domestic resistance by shifting decision-making to arenas where opposition is weaker. Robert Putnam’s Two-Level Game Theory explains this well. Leaders negotiate internationally, not just with foreign states, but against their own domestic constraints. When domestic opposition is strong, leaders may deliberately use international agreements to lock in outcomes they could not secure at home.

In simpler terms, if the people say no, sign a deal that makes their consent irrelevant.

Neoliberalism With a Nationalist Mask

This also exposes the contradiction at the heart of the Modi government project. On the surface, it speaks the language of nationalism, self-reliance and civilizational pride. In practice, it follows a textbook neoliberal script. Privatise risk, socialise loss, and open domestic markets to global capital while calling it reform.

Dependency theorists warned decades ago that such arrangements turn developing economies into markets rather than producers, locking them into asymmetric trade relationships. India risks becoming exactly that in agriculture. A consumption base for foreign agribusiness, while its own farmers are slowly pushed out of viability.

Opposition’s Failure and Responsibility

Yet this is not a one-man story. The opposition, too, bears responsibility. Beyond episodic outrage and press conferences, there has been little sustained effort to build a coherent alternative vision for Indian agriculture. One that combines reform with protection, productivity with dignity.

Farmers cannot be remembered only when they are on highways or during elections. If the opposition truly sees this as betrayal, it must articulate why, clearly, economically, and politically, and take that argument back to Parliament, to states, and to the streets.

Not Reform, Nor Globalisation. 

This isn’t reform. This isn’t globalisation in any honest sense. This looks like revenge, delivered quietly, contractually, and dressed up as diplomacy.

When a government cannot defeat protest, but can outwait it and outmaneuver it through trade deals, democracy itself is diminished. And when the cost of that maneuvering is borne by those who feed the nation, the betrayal is not abstract. It is deeply, materially Indian. The farmers resisted once; the policy, it seems, has not forgiven them.

(The author is a political analyst and columnist with a deep interest in South Asian geopolitics, international diplomacy and policy reform. He graduated from King's College London with a focus in global governance and is passionate about narrowing the disparity among academia and policy making.  Views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at aaravsharmaa245@gmail.com)