A Pyrrhic victory for protesters

PM's retreat on farm laws conceals what is actually going on

In the end, the new farm laws were in place for less than a year. In his address on Gurpurab, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he apologised for failing to convince a section of farmers that the amended farm laws would be in their interest, that the government would begin the process of withdrawing the amendments, and that a committee would be set up to examine changing crop patterns and making the minimum support price system “more effective”.

There is little doubt that withdrawing the new laws is a mistake. They were hardly shock therapy; the most that the new legislation