THE more than five million metric tons of rice dumped on our shores during the almost two years of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), according to peasant groups tracking the impact of the law on the broader society, meant very little savings for rice consumers and a deep, irreversible misery for close to three million small rice farmers. Historically, the small rice farmers are in the category of “the country’s wretched” and the RTL just piled up on the narrative of suffering.
The hoax sold to hasten the passage of the RTL, that it would be a win for both rice consumers and the small rice farmers, was just like the hoax that the intellectual and political class peddled before the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) towards the end of 2004 (we formally acceded on Jan.1, 2005). Big words, big promises and forecasts of a coming agricultural renaissance that never came to pass; history repeated itself with the RTL. Small rice farmers, in less than a year, turned into zombie hordes of dead men walking with the importers — the only winners in the RTL legal scam — feasting on their sunken carcasses.
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