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Rosa Luxemburg had once reportedly said that ‘peasant question’ is one of the two wounded points of the Russian Revolution (the other being the ‘national question’). About the second, she was simply mistaken; about the first, she was somewhat correct, as Russian Revolution happened at a particular conjuncture of contradictions in Russia, during the First World War, economic breakdown and famine and presence of the theoretically and politically most advanced vanguard party under the leadership of Lenin. In October 1917, in Russia, proletariat still constituted only 10-11 percent of whole population, whereas the peasantry constituted almost 85 percent of Russian population (with a considerably large chunk of middle and lower-middle peasants). That is why, immediately, the Russian Revolution could only implement the most radical bourgeois democratic land program, namely, ‘nationalization of land + allotment of land to individual peasants’. It was only between 1929 (when ‘emergency steps’ were initiated by Stalin) and 1936 (when collectivization was completed) that Socialist production relations were established in agriculture in Soviet Union. In this sense, historically, the ‘peasant question’, indeed, was, so to speak, ‘a wounded point’ of the Russian Revolution, though not precisely in the sense in which Rosa talked about it.

Coming to India of present times, Rosa Luxemburg would have called the ‘peasant question’ a ‘wounded point’, not of the Indian Revolution, but of the Indian revolutionary communist movement! The majority of Indian revolutionary communist lack the courage to ‘call a spade a spade’, when we come to the ‘peasant question’. Those who believe that India is in the stage of democratic revolution are more consistent in their fallacy! However, some comrades who believe that India is a capitalist country and is in the stage of socialist revolution, find themselves in a self-imposed ‘catch-22’ situation! They cannot directly support the demand of the rich farmers and kulaks, namely, the demand to safeguard MSP and increase it; however, they are swept off their feet by big mobilization and militant tactics by the present rich farmers' movement and fear that they might miss the train if they do not support it, even if conditionally! Consequently, they are obliged to indulge into spectacular intellectual somersaults.

For example, we came across the positions of some very good and close comrades who consider India to be a capitalist country in the stage of socialist revolution, which are, in particular, amusing. Their arguments can be summarized as follows, to which we will respond in a detailed article within a month:

1. They argue that we need to see the peasant question politically and not economistically (AGREED!) and therefore should not passively wait for the ruin of small and marginal peasantry, but analyse the particular class situation, so to speak, in order to use this moment for the appropriate proletarian propaganda among poor peasants (AGREED!) and the present Farm Laws (including the first two on APMC Mandis and Contract Farming) are going to hurt the poor peasantry in particular which will be proletarianized due to these laws by allowing penetration of corporate capital in the agricultural sector (NOT AGREED!); something, which was, supposedly, not already being done by the rich kulaks-farmers, or was being done in somewhat more humane or better way! (AGAIN, NOT AGREED!)

2. These comrades conveniently (or may be, inconveniently!) assume that if the APMC Mandi system is destroyed, then the principal losers will be the poor peasants rather than rich kulaks and farmers (WHY? HOW?). To prove this, they present data of general harmful anti-people impacts of penetration of corporate capital into any economic sector, including the trade of agricultural commodities, for example, the price volatility due to speculation and futures trade, etc. However, how this particularly hurts poor peasants is not demonstrated by them! The truth, based on concrete facts, is that, as a secular tendency (that is, a long-term tendency) the market prices of agricultural commodities determined by the reference point of MSP have always remained much higher than the free-market prices (even if we count in the volatility and fluctuations created by all machinations of the big monopoly capital in the prices of these commodities!). Why? MSPs give artificially high rates of profit to the rural bourgeoisie. The average rate of profit of the emerging economies (EM – Brazil, India, China, Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey) has never been more than 10 percent in the last one-and-a-half decade; if we subtract China’s average rate of profit, the average rate of profits of all other economies in the EM falls below 8 percent. (see https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/a-world-rate-of-profit-a-new-approach/) In such a scenario, MSPs give almost 30 to 50 percent rate of profit over Comprehensive Cost (including the cost of all technological inputs, raw materials, fertilizers and all labour inputs, including the wage labour and the market-evaluation of the family labour, interest paid, and rent of land). Obviously, this involves transfer of value to the agricultural bourgeoisie from other sectors of economy, which the big monopoly capital and its representative capitalist state compensates by taxing the poor. However, still it hurts the industrial-financial capitalist interests as well as the interests of the working poor population, including the rural poor. The reason is that (for the working poor) it increases the average prices of the agricultural wage goods and other wage goods dependent on agricultural goods for their production, leading to expenditure of the larger portion of their income on these wage goods and at the same time leading to a decline in their average nutrition. This, too, is an established fact and can be proven with facts and data and many Marxist as well as non-Marxist researchers have demonstrated it time and again. At the same time, this reference point for market prices set by MSP creates an upward pressure on the average wages in the long-term (because in the short-term industrial bourgeoisie exacts the price of subsidizing the rural bourgeoisie from the working masses through taxes), which can create a downward pressure on their average rate of profit, other conditions being constant. However, bourgeoisie always puts the burden of such decline in profitability on the working masses. So again, in the end, the loser is the working masses. It is true that even if and when MSPs are done away with, the working class will have to strive hard to maintain its wages in order to gain from the repeal of the MSPs, and only then, what Marx called relative wages (share of wages relative to profit in the newly created value) can be increased or maintained. The bourgeoisie tries to utilise every opportunity to decrease the wages of the workers when the wage goods become cheaper. Therefore, potential benefits of doing away with the MSP or any other protection for rich farmers, are not an automatic or given thing for the working class and it will have to fight for it against the bourgeoisie. That is why on the one hand the working poor don't support the rich farmers-kulaks (the rural bourgeoisie), or, the big monopoly capital but also don't oppose big monopoly capital from the class standpoint of the rural bourgeoisie. To understand this point one can read Marx’s writings on the repeal of Corn Laws and Free Trade, which along with other writings of Engels, Kautsky and Lenin, we will quote at length, when we present our detailed critique of the position of these comrades.

That MSP is simply against the interests of the rural poor and the entire working class, is a well-established fact and everybody knows it, but afraid to admit it publicly. Our above-mentioned comrades also circumvent this question: whether the MSP regime should be saved or not? Does thinking politically in the vein of Lenin means surrendering the class interests of rural poor and entire working class and go over to the position of the kulaks and rich peasantry?

3. THE CASE OF BIHAR: These comrades argue that the destruction of APMC Mandi will spell doom for the poor peasants and they take Bihar’s case to be a living testimony to this fact! However, they fail to explain why in many other states the absence of a well-functioning APMC Mandi system did not spell doom and destruction for the poor peasantry ANY MORE than it was already undergoing under the weight of exploitation by the rich kulaks, farmers, usurers, middlemen (well, they were not waiting for the corporate capital to come and destroy them!)? If APMC Mandis save the poor peasants from ruin then what led to the ruin of poor peasants in states where there is an APMC Mandi system as well as MSP (and mind you, that ruin was not any slower than that in Bihar!)? Let us have a glance at some representative facts and data.

Between 2001 and 2011, in Haryana there was a 50 percent increase, in Andhra Pradesh there was a 48 percent increase, in Karnataka there was a 53 percent increase in the number of agricultural workers and almost a corresponding decline in the number of farmers; why and how can it happen in states which have good or moderate APMC Mandi system? On the other hand, the rate of rural proletarianization in West Bengal was just 31 percent in the same period, though contract farming has developed a long way in this state? In Bihar, the number of agricultural workers increased by 49.27 lakhs to reach 1.83 crore, a much slower increase if we compare it to the rate of increase in agricultural labourers in Haryana, which has a comparatively sound APMC Mandi system? Moreover, what percentage of farmers were getting MSP in Bihar when the APMC Mandi system was intact? Average landholding size in Bihar is 0.9 hectares and less than1 percent of all peasants are large farmers, whereas 3 percent fall in the middle peasant category; to be precise, in 2015-16, large farmers were only 0.02 percent, medium farmers were only 0.49 percent and semi-medium were 2.52 percent, which means 96.96 percent were marginal and small farmers, who seldom have any marketable surplus and who never benefit from MSP because they are net buyers or food grains. Given this fact, 95-96 percent of peasants in Bihar either have no or negligible marketable surplus; what impact did the dismantling of APMC Mandi system have on these small and marginal peasants? Hardly any! On the other hand, if we look at the changes in the average size of landholdings in Bihar after the dismantling of the APMC mandi system, we find that the biggest losers due to this were the rich farmers: between 2005 and 2015, the average size of landholding for large farmers decreased from 20.56 hectares to 14.48 hectares, whereas the average size of landholding for marginal peasants remained constant at 0.25 hectares and the average size of landholding for small peasants also remained constant at 1.25 hectares. This data clearly reveals the fact that the dismantling of APMC Act and MSP regime in Bihar actually hurt the large farmers and upper middle farmers.

Another question: Why did the number of cultivators decreased in a slower fashion in Bihar than that in Haryana between 2001 and 2011 if the repeal of APMC Act was a major factor in rural proletarianization? In Bihar, the rate of depeasantization was 12.17 percent, whereas in Haryana it was 17.80 percent between 2001 and 2011; according to the argument of these comrades, the APMCs should have retarded, if not stopped altogether, the process of rural proletarianization and depeasantization in Haryana, which always had a far superior mandi system than Bihar ever had? In MP the growth in agricultural labourers was 64.75 percent; in Rajasthan it was 95.73 percent and in Bihar it was only 36.73 percent; how come, as MP and Rajasthan do have a much better APMC system than Bihar, which totally did away with APMC in 2006? Finally, even if a miniscule section of poor and marginal peasants in Bihar reached APMC Mandis, they had to undersell to the commission agents at APMC Mandis because they had no storage facilities and therefore were forced to get rid of their produce as soon as possible at whatever rate that was being offered by the mandi commission agents; now the place of mandi agent has been taken by the private traders and middlemen. It is very much clear from the facts that in Bihar too, the beneficiaries of MSP through APMC Mandis were only 2-3 percent of all peasants, mainly the rich and well-to-do farmers. Therefore, to put Bihar forth as a model demonstrative of what might happen if APMC Mandis are not there, is GROSSLY MISLEADING. This is exactly the lie being peddled out by rich kulaks and farmers organizations today and it is surprising to see that our good old comrades have borrowed this logic uncritically from them and some other reformist bourgeois/petty-bourgeois political economists.

Besides, the issue of APMC Mandis is not a separate issue in itself today. Farmers are opposing the dismantling of APMC mandis only because they want the MSP regime to stay, perpetuate and increase. The main issue is MSP and there is no doubt whatsoever that MSP only hurts the working poor. Why in many states the farmers are not opposing the dismantling of APMC Mandi system and MSP in any meaningful manner? Where is the data which proves that the poor peasantry actually benefited from APMC Mandi system in Bihar, till it existed in any form? In fact, the data contrary to this claim can easily be found and presented. Where is the statistics which proves that the poor peasantry was better off when the APMC Mandis existed? No particular data on this is to be found because this is not the truth.

The fact is that the crisis of poor peasantry and the chronic backwardness of agriculture in Bihar has other historical-structural reasons which require us to look into the agrarian history of Bihar right since the first colonial land settlements, zamindari abolition, then the period of the so-called ‘Green Revolution’, the neglect by the state and the resultant chronic backwardness, low level of mechanization (which has increased considerably in the last decade or so but still by far lags behind states like Punjab, Haryana, Terai of Uttarakhand, Western UP, etc.) and productivity (this too has increased considerably in the last 14-15 years, but is far behind than productivity in Punjab and Haryana). TO REDUCE the causes of the chronic poverty of the poor peasantry and relative backwardness of the agriculture in Bihar to the repeal of APMC Act is ridiculous and childish, especially, when it benefited hardly 2-3 percent of total peasantry of Bihar, namely, the rich farmers, even when it existed. And all of this to populistically kowtow before the rural bourgeoisie, losing the politically independent position of the working poor population and the height of irony is that this is done by our good comrades in the name of “thinking politically”!

4. Similarly, corporate contract farming is taken to be the weapon which will proletarianize the poor peasants. Again, some examples are given but many are left out. The experience of contract farming across the world has been very varied. Leaving apart the element of corruption in such a system, we can see a number of models where middle and upper-middle peasants suffered from it and also models where the peasants also benefited from it. It is definitely true that such a system spurs futures trade in primary commodities as well as speculative activity. But big monopoly capital does that in every sector that it enters. We don’t oppose big monopoly capital’s penetration from the standpoint of ruin of small capital (in case of agriculture, we are talking about the rich and upper-middle peasantry, which play the role of small capitalists in comparison to the big monopoly capital) in various sectors of economy, like retail trade, then why present a romanticist petty-bourgeois opposition to big monopoly capital in the sector of agriculture? Our point of departure should be the concerns that relate to the class interests of the working poor, that is, working class, poor peasantry and lower-middle peasants, rather than the class interests of rich kulaks and farmers; this would certainly not be thinking “politically” if someone is using this metaphor in the Leninist vein. The speculative repercussions of big monopoly capital are not limited to the agricultural sector only. It is not something particular to the agricultural sector or the marketing of agricultural produce. This obviously leads to the protracted process of ruin of a number of middle and upper-middle peasants and sometimes also accelerates the ruin of poor peasants; but as far as the ruin of poor peasants is concerned, it is not something which the big monopoly corporate capital has inaugurated or will inaugurate! The protracted process of ruin of small, middle and upper-middle peasantry is going on, especially since the ‘Green Revolution’; 20 million small and marginal peasants had left agriculture between 1971 and 1980! One definitely can’t blame that on corporate capital, but on the rise of the class of rich owner farmers and rich tenant farmers, with State support and incentives and accelerated capitalist development. The only difference today is that this ruin was done earlier at the hands of rich kulaks, farmers, usurers, middlemen and traders; and now it will be done by the big monopoly capital! Yes, there will be quantitative difference in the rate and speed of this ruin, however, it is difficult to say whether it will necessarily be faster or slower than before and that is not a factor on which the political line of revolutionary proletariat would be determined, is it? For example, can the revolutionary proletariat say to the poor peasantry that let’s support the rich kulaks-farmers as they will ruin you in a slower and more painful process, and oppose the corporate capital from the standpoint of rich kulaks-farmers (namely, saving the MSP regime!), which will ruin you faster? Don’t we know that contract farming is already being done in India? Don’t we know that poor peasants smothered under debt-burden are forced to cultivate particular varieties of particular crops by rich kulaks and farmers, as well as, arhatiyas/middlemen/usurers? Don’t we know that poor peasants already face fraud and corruption in this system of informal contract farming? Don’t we know that this informal system of contract farming has already long been depeasantizing the poor peasants? Don’t we know that the ‘main reason for leaving agriculture’ for most depeasantized poor peasants has remained to the debt-burden created by non-institutional credit given by usurers, arhatiyas, rich kulaks-farmers, and increasing cost of agriculture due to the neglect of development of canal irrigation network by the government, because bulk of the subsidies are channeled into benefiting rich kulaks and farmers through MSP and other means?

For the proletariat and poor peasantry, there not a single economic OR political reason to support the demands of the rich kulaks, farmers, etc. and there is not single economic OR political reason to believe that poor peasants fared any better under the regime of exploitation by rich kulaks-farmers, than they would under the economic hegemony of corporate capital, which the proletariat and semi-proletariat will indeed oppose from its own politically independent class standpoint, rather than from the standpoint of rural bourgeoisie, which is its principal exploiter and oppressor today. The problem here is that our good comrades have assumed at the outset, what they had to prove! An ouroboros kind of argumentation: a snake chasing its own tail! I don’t think Lenin would have called this “treating the peasant question as a political question”! This would tantamount to political surrenderism and tailendism on the part of the proletariat and this is what these comrades have called “thinking politically”, and not without some amount of embarrassment. This is SO NOT thinking politically! Some comrades mistake petty-bourgeois realism and populism with ‘real politics’, or, ‘thinking politically’. Such is the state of pessimism of the revolutionary left in India at present! That too, when it can hardly be proven that the penetration of corporate capital is, in particular, going to hurt poor peasants ANY MORE than the rich kulaks, farmers, usurers and arhatiyas were already doing! Let us dwell on this a little longer.

5. The assumption which propels these comrades to this faulty conclusion is that MSP and APMC system helps the poor peasants. They suspect the finding of the Shanta Kumar Committee report that only 6 percent of the peasants get the benefit of MSP. They speculate that this percentage would be much higher! Let us see. First of all, even before Shanta Kumar Committee report, even commentators, analysts, agriculture specialists (including the Marxist and non-Marxist ones) knew this fact well enough that MSP benefits only a miniscule portion of peasants, not more than 6 to 8 percent, if we are talking about the national average. Secondly, those peasants who are principal buyers or net buyers of foodgrains are only going to lose from the system of MSP, assuming that they do have an access to APMC mandis and MSP; this too is a well-recognized fact by all agricultural specialists (including the sane ‘left’ ones!). Thus the assumption of our good comrades is simply fallacious and misleading. Interestingly, these comrades seem to be stuck in a ‘catch-22’ situation on the question of MSP in their article, of which a detailed critique will be presented by us soon; they neither can fully and directly support it, not oppose it, because that would kill the rationale of supporting the rich kulaks-farmers movement, which is centred on the question of MSP. That is why they have devised an ingenious method, now employed by a number of comrades who believe in the stage of Socialist revolution: establish a causal link between MSP and PDS. Let us see whether such a causal link can be established.

6. Such a causal link never existed and we need not conjure one up! The fact is that PDS predates MSP by at least 2 decades, though it was named as such only one decade before the introduction of MSP. Secondly, in many countries where there is no system of profitable remunerative prices (MSPs) to rich kulaks-farmers and agricultural prices are determined to a large extent by ‘free market’, some kind of PDS (universal or targeted) does exist. Thirdly, in India the destruction of PDS started in 1992 when it was converted into RPDS (revamped PDS) and then in 1997 into TPDS (targeted PDS). This was the period when the MSP regime was functioning and perpetuating to an ever greater extent; in fact, the bulk of agricultural subsidies were shifted from building canal networks to funding this MSP regime especially since the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. One can read a number of studies which show that this shift exacted a heavy price from the poor and middle peasants who were more dependent on canal irrigation and monsoon, and could not afford tube-wells, etc. to exploit the ground-water resources. The retreat of the state from building the agricultural infrastructure and focus totally on ensuring MSPs to the rich farmers and kulaks also benefited the latter because they started renting out tube-wells to poor and lower-middle peasants; moreover, this system increased the cost of agriculture in an unhealthy manner even for the rich kulaks and farmers, again creating a pressure for increasing MSP; lastly, high MSP was one of the reason that PDS was first converted in RPDS and then TPDS, in turn, increasing food insecurity for the working poor, because MSP became a reference point for market prices and PDS became unsustainable for the state. The fact the prices determined by free-market are often quite volatile, does not cancel the fact that, still, as a secular tendency, the free-market prices remain below MSP. See this study published in EPW to understand this fact: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4413277?seq=1 This is only one such study, there are many more like this. The simple point that such comrades need to understand that the system of MSP is not a pre-requisite for government procurement and PDS. As simple as that. These are two different issues giving rise to two different types of class demands.

Therefore, contrary to the claim of apologists for small capital and rural bourgeoisie, the MSP regime in India has only hurt the poor not only by MSP becoming the reference point for market prices but also through the destruction of PDS; if, at all, any causal link between MSP regime and PDS can be developed, it is inversely proportional.

7. Now on the position of working class on these Farm Laws. The first two laws pertain, in particular, to the contradiction between two factions of the ruling class, over their share in the appropriated surplus (not only in the agricultural sector but in the entire economy); had the poor peasantry really been the principal loser due the first two farm laws, we should have formed an alliance with the rich peasantry and kulaks on selected issues of common minimum agreement and even then, we were not obliged to support the demand for safeguarding and perpetuating the totally anti-people regime of MSP. However, since the first two farm laws target the rich peasantry and kulaks, in principal, by dismantling the MSP regime and benefit the corporate capital by “clearing the ground” for it, the working class should have an independent position of not supporting the rich kulaks and farmers in their anti-people demand of MSP, or the corporate capitalist class in its endeavours against the rural bourgeoisie; the working class would rather prepare its own charter of demands against the corporate capitalist class, which should include the democratic demands of the poor and lower-middle peasantry and the rural as well as urban working class and lower-middle class, and MSP certainly is not included in these demands. To fall for the false binary of support of rich kulak-farmer demand for MSP or that of the corporate take-over would be losing the politically independent position of the working class. As far as the third law pertaining to the regulations on stocking of essential commodities is concerned, it is a clearly and out-and-out anti-poor law, (not so much against the rich peasants, kulaks and middlemen; had the government brought only this particular law, I suspect this “militant stirring” of farmers would have taken place! In fact, many rich kulaks, farmers and middlemen have long been resenting against the cap put on stocking of essential commodities for long!). This is the law which the working class and poor peasantry must oppose, while at the same time, demanding universal PDS separately, without causally linking it with MSP, which is grossly misleading the working class and poor peasantry into tailending the rich farmers and kulaks.

8. Thinking politically means understanding the particular CLASS SITUATION of every moment. The class situation means the relation between different classes vis-a-vis any particular event or process. This relation in turn depends on relationship between the interests of different classes involved in any particular class situation. In this complex dialectic, what must not be lost sight of is the fact that in any particular event or process, what classes are the losers and what classes are beneficiaries, who are the exploiters and who are the exploited, what classes can truly be considered friend classes and what other classes can be considered enemy classes.

The assessment of such a class situation by communists must not be construed as “clapping gleefully” at the objective plight and destiny of mass of poor peasantry under capitalism, as some of our worthy comrades are wont to believe. (They also know that this is not truth and they have conjured up this claim only to create an apologia for their surrenderism and tailendism before the rural bourgeoisie.) Though one does witness the other extreme of surrendering of the political class interests of working class and its ally, the poor peasantry to the class interests of rich kulaks and farmers at the present moment among vast sections of communists of all hues in the name of making “meaningful intervention” in the ongoing rich farmers' movement or “thinking politically”! The proletariat must maintain its independent political position under all circumstances, THAT IS WHAT THINKING POLITICALLY, IN LENINIST VEIN entails. Are there periods in history when the contradiction between different factions of the enemy classes becomes principal contradiction of the moment? Yes. One can understand this from the present state of imperialism as well. For the entire stage of imperialism, the contradiction between labour and capital, between oppressed nations and imperialism and inter-imperialist rivalry are the basic contradictions and any one of these contradictions might become principal at any given moment; today, for instance, the contradiction among imperialist countries is the principal contradiction as the forces of labour are too weak to pose any meaningful challenge, and, historically speaking, the national question has become peripheral internationally. In the inter-imperialist rivalry, the working class must not side with any imperialist power; the same mistakes that the Tankies (revisionists) are doing in the context of US-Russian inter-imperialist rivalry as being played out in Syria and Ukraine. Instead, the working class adopts a politically-independent class position of anti-imperialism.

Similarly, the issue of first two laws, that is targeted at dismantling the system of MSP constitute a contradiction between two factions of the ruling class, namely the big monopoly capitalist class and the rural bourgeoisie. These first two laws aimed at dismantling the MSP regime and corporate capital’s hegemonization of agricultural sector are not going to destroy the poor peasantry, semi-proletariat and agricultural labourer ANY MORE than the rich kulaks-farmer class, usurers, arhatiyas (mind you, these are often one person!) were already destroying. It is a fight between the big monopoly capital and rural bourgeoisie for maintaining and increasing their share in the appropriated of surplus value, primarily in the agricultural sector and in general, in the entire economy and in such a scenario, the proletariat and poor peasantry should adopt a politically independent position against capitalist interests, rather than opposing big monopoly capital from the standpoint of small capital (here, rural bourgeoisie).

The fact that the first two laws pertain to the contradiction between two factions of bourgeoisie is also demonstrated by the treatment by the state of this movement, which is quite different from the ones meted out to movements of working class, dalit landless and poor peasantry, and other sections of working poor.

Proletariat is not obliged to vacillate between the two ends of this false binary and those who demand the proletariat to do so, are denying a politically independent position and any political agency to the proletariat, ironically enough, in the name of thinking “politically”! In fact, what they are calling “thinking politically” is in content, practicing petty-bourgeois populism, reformism, surrenderism and tailendism before the class of rich kulaks and farmers, as they precisely lack the courage “to think politically”.

On this issue, we will publish a detailed critique with a political class analysis of data and facts within a month. However, this much needed to be said at the outset.

(Hopefully, a Hindi translation of this note will follow soon. Apologies to comrades who read in Hindi; I was obliged to write this note in English because this note is to convey our initial critical response to certain close comrades, who have written their position in English. The detailed critique also will first appear in English and then will be translated into Hindi.)