Farmers Movement Archive

Farmers ready to stay put on Delhi borders till Modi govt lasts: Narendra Tikait

Farmers are ready to stay put on Delhi borders to protest against three agri laws for the remaining three and a half years of the Modi government’s second term and the stir cannot be “culled” any which way the Centre tries, farm leader Mahendra Singh Tikait’s son Narendra Tikait says.Narendra, who does not hold any official position in the Bharatiya Kisan Union formed by his father in 1986, and mostly focuses on the family’s farming activities but is as vocal on issues concerning farmers as his two elder brothers Naresh and Rakesh Tikait, who are leading from the front in the agitation that has been continuing for more than 100 days.Speaking to PTI at his home in Sisauli, Muzaffarnagar district, 45-year-old Narendra said his two brothers and the entire Tikait family would leave the protest if even a small wrongdoing is proved against any family member, as he rejected allegations by some quarters that they had built properties and made money from the agitation.The eldest brother Naresh Tikait is BKU president, while Rakesh Tikait holds the position of national spokesperson of the organisation, which under Mahendra Singh Tikait’s leadership in 1988 had laid a virtual siege to Meerut in pursuit of higher prices for sugarcane, cancellation of loans and lowering of water and electricity rates. The same year, BKU held a week-long protest in Delhi’s Boat Club to focus on the plight of farmers.After Mahendra Singh Tikait’s death in 2011, Naresh and Rakesh have been leading the main organisation in various roles, though a number of faction groups have emerged in various parts of the country over the years.Narendra said the Centre is under the misconception that it can “cull” the farmers’ protest like it has “culled” other agitations in the past using various tactics.“I am here in Sisauli but my eyes are there on the protest,” he said, adding that he kept visiting Ghazipur border where hundreds of farmers and BKU supporters had been camping since November 2020.“This government has a misconception, probably because it never faced such a protest, but we have seen agitations and been part of those for 35 years. This government has experience of facing only smaller protests and of getting those culled through various tactics,” he said.“They cannot crush this protest by any means. This will continue for as long as our demands are met. This government has a tenure of three and a half years left, and we can continue the movement till the end of its term,” he asserted.The younger and lesser-known Tikait said farmers would vacate the protest sites only after their demands were met completely and not on the basis of any future assurance or partial agreement on demands.“If the government says crops would be bought at MSP then why cannot they give this in writing? They keep harping about giving subsidies on LPG cylinders, but that subsidy is also gone,” he said.Tikait alleged that the Centre had done the same to the school education sector where private institutes are thriving and minting money while the condition of government facilities keeps getting poorer and poorer.“Now they want business houses to store crops, hoard those and later sell at desired rates. Their push is for business and that’s the agenda,” he said, adding that farmers are already reeling under the high cost of labour and fuel prices.Asked about allegations that the Tikait family holds land worth hundreds of crores and that BKU is involved in hooliganism in the region, he said, “There is nothing that they (the government) could find against us and therefore this (levelling allegations) is happening. If they find any wrongdoing on the part of any member of our family then we will return from Delhi.”He also rejected allegations of hooliganism by BKU as incorrect. “Why would we do it? Some even say that we are taking money for the protest. More than 200 of our farmers have sacrificed their lives during the protest. People are donating money even during the last rites of those who have died. There is no question of us taking money for protests as we are not short on resources,” he said. PTI

The Tribune

2021-03-10

Muzaffarnagar