Farmers Movement Archive

Farm union welcomes Opposition support to stir

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a platform of farmer unions protesting three agricultural laws, on Monday “welcomed” the support offered by key Opposition parties to its planned mass demonstration on May 26, and asked them to mount the pressure on the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre to repeal a series of legislation passed last year. The farmers’ outfit, however, reiterated that it wouldn’t involve any political party in their agitation or negotiations.“We have always said that only direct talks between the farmers and the government solve the issue. The government thinks it has freed itself from the issue. That’s why we are asking for talks,” said Gurnam Singh Charuni, a farm leader.Farmers have been protesting at five sites in large camps near Delhi’s borders: Singhu, Ghaziabad, Tikri, Dhansa and at Shahjahanpur on the Rajasthan-Haryana border, demanding the rollback of three laws passed in September last year to lift restrictions on trade in farm produce.On May 21, the SKM wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking the Union government to resume dialogue to end the agitation, but remained steadfast on their demand to scrap the legislation.Farm leaders said they wanted to use the occasion to “keep things on the boil”. The top leadership of the agitation felt that the government could not be allowed to simply sit tight even as the farmers protested. “We wrote to the prime minister because we have to keep things on the boil. The government cannot take it easy,” said Hannan Mollah, a left politician who is a key member of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha.The SKM’s statement comes a day after leaders of 12 opposition parties extended their support to the farmers’ call for a nationwide protest on May 26 to mark months of the farmers’ protest against the Centre’s three new farm laws, despite fears that large gatherings of farmers camped on the capital’s borders and elsewhere could turn into a superspreader event amid a raging second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.The apparent trigger for the farmers’ letter to the prime minister, asking him to urgently restart talks, is that the farmers’ protests would complete six months on May 26.So far, 11 rounds of talks between 40 farm leaders and the government have failed to resolve the crisis. Both the government and farmers called off the series of discussions on January 22, citing lack of progress. The unions have rejected the government’s offer to freeze the laws for 18 months.The agriculture ministry is awaiting instructions from the “highest level” – which in bureaucratic parlance usually means the prime minister’s office -- on how to respond to the demand to resume negotiations.“The letter was addressed to the prime minister. So, a decision on what next (is to be done) will depend on instructions from the highest levels,” an agriculture ministry official said.Congress secretary Pranav Jha supported the farmers’ protest plans. “In this government, nothing can move without Modi’s consent. Only if he wants, the farm laws can be repealed. But the government’s strategy so far had been to tire out the farmers and waiting to see that they go away.”“It is a political movement now. It’s not simply a farmers’ movement,” said KS Mani a farm economist formerly with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.A section of the Opposition, however, thinks that the farmers have stretched their agitation unnecessarily.A senior Opposition leader from Punjab, requesting anonymity, said, “In every agitation, it is more important to know when to stop than when to begin the agitation.”“The farm groups should have declared victory after the Supreme Court put the laws in abeyance and gone home. But they decided to stay put and after what happened on January 26, they have also lost support of the middle-class,” the leader added.Most of the protesters are farmers from Punjab and Haryana, the two food bowl states. They are demanding the repeal of three laws to liberalise farm trade passed by Parliament in September that farmers say will leave small farmers at the mercy of large corporate farms.A key concern is that the laws, by ushering in free markets, would pave the way for abolition of government-run markets that offer minimum support prices, an assured floor price, for staples.The Modi government has, however, billed the laws as a necessary step to modernize India’s antiquated farming sector that is hardly productive. The gross domestic product (GDP) per worker in agriculture is one-third of the economy-wide GDP per worker. This means productivity in agriculture is too low to lift the overall economy.Prime Minister Modi has sought to allay concerns that the system of support prices or MSP for farmers would be jeopardised in any way. “The system of MSP was there, is there and will continue to be there,” he had said in Parliament in February.To be sure, the new laws don’t offer a guarantee that the government will continue to offer support prices for staples, a system introduced in the 1960s to help India offer profitable prices to farmers to overcome food crises.The laws at the heart of the protests are The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020.The government has said the laws would spur investments and give farmers freedom to sell their produce directly to large buyers in a sector that accounts for nearly 15% of India’s $2.9 trillion economy and employs half its workforce.

Hindustan Times

25-05-2021

India