#97 What To make Of Protests? 🎧

<em>This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: </em><strong><em>how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?</em></strong><br/><br/><em>Welcome to the mid-week edition in which we write essays on a public policy theme. The usual public policy review comes out on weekends.</em><br/><br/><em>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.</em><br/><br/><em>- RSJ</em><br/><br/>The farmers protesting against the three new farm laws (“Farm Laws 2020”) have entered into the seventh round of negotiations with the Union government. We have discussed these laws a few times <a target="_blank" href="https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/94-reforms-caught-consensus-bowled">here</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/70-concentrated-costs-diffused-benefits">here</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/90-politics-is-the-art-of-the-possible">here</a>. For a moment, leave the laws aside and focus on the protests. Not the conspiracy theories about who is funding them and what their ‘real’ agenda is. But on how protests work. I had a few questions as I thought about them.<br/><br/><strong>Why do some issues generate protest over others?</strong><br/><br/>Take the last couple of months in India. We have the new farm laws that seek to open up the markets for farmers to freely sell their produce. The economic conditions of our farmers under the APMC mandis and MSP regime need no retelling. The new laws are new only for India. In most pa