This is an accumulation of pressures.

"Punjab farmers have huge political clout and extract massive subsidies invisible to the public," wrote SA Aiyar. Farmers have been protesting on the borders of Delhi for 17 days demanding complete repeal of new farm laws which allow farmers to sell their produce directly to private buyers, instead of being forced to sell through government controlled wholesale markets known as Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC). These markets are controlled by middle-men who form cartels to fix low prices for farmers while selling at high prices to consumers. The new laws seek to get rid of APMCs. The state of Bihar got rid of APMCs in 2005, and "For 14 years now, experts said, farmers have not had a favorable market for their produce." "Before the scrapping of the APMC Act, farmers would sell their produce to the market committees where minimum price was guaranteed. But after the repeal of this system, they indulged in distress sale lest their produce would go to waste because they had no storage facility," said economist Abdul Qadir. "But these laws are highly sensible," wrote Aiyar. "Modi must stick to all three laws." 'Sensible laws' would not "expressly exclude the jurisdiction of the civil court, leaving the farmers remediless and with no independent medium of dispute redressal mechanism".  "Autocracies like China would smash such agitations. But democracies do not shoot agitators," regrets Aiyar. Aiyar has forgotten the fierce beating of students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in January this year by Delhi Police, as well as the shooting of members of certain community during riots over citizenship bills in Delhi in February, and the death by police shooting of five farmers protesting for better prices for their produce in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh in 2017. India is supposed to be a federal republic, but "The real power is with the center, which has all-important 'agencies' and holds the purse-strings in fiscally-challenging times," wrote Harish Damodaran. In May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a stimulus package for the economy, worth Rs 20 trillion. In a recent reply to a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act the government revealed that Rs 3 trillion was sanctioned for loans, of which just Rs 1.20 trillion has been disbursed. "Many of India's current draconian laws have their ancestry in the British era where they were very frankly instruments of repression," wrote Manoj Joshi. Autocratic governments in China, South Korea and Singapore enriched their people by growing their economies, wrote Diva Jain, whereas the rate of growth in India's economy was falling sharply even before the coronaviurus epidemic, explained Roshan Kishore. No wonder 74% of Indians are suffering from stress and 88% from anxiety. Pressures have been building since 2014. Protests are better than an explosion. Over to Modi.