Farmers Movement Archive

Farm bodies come out against direct payment, protest in Punjab

BATHINDA: Raising a voice against the new directives of Food Corporation of India (FCI) about uploading the land records on a portal for direct payment into the bank accounts of the farmers, the farmer unions held protests at the FCI depots across the state on Monday, observing the day as ‘FCI Bachao Divas’ to oppose “attempts to dismantle both PDS and MSP procurement”. The farm organisations also sent letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that thousands of farmers had been camping at the Delhi borders for nearly four-and-a-half months braving bitter cold, rains and now the scorching heat. They have been demanding repeal of the three farm laws, and enacting of a law guaranteeing MSP and procurement at remunerative prices, but the government has not conceded to the demands and has stopped all discussions after January 22. The Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) said the attack of the central government on FCI, MSP, procurement of food grains and the public distribution system began with the report of the Shanta Kumar committee placed in January 2015. It recommended reduction in the number of beneficiaries under the Food Security Act from the then 67% to 40%, allow private players to procure and store food grains, stop bonuses on minimum support price (MSP) paid by states to farmers, and adopt cash transfer system so that MSP and food subsidy amounts can be directly transferred to the accounts of farmers and food security beneficiaries, FCI should involve itself in full-fledged grains procurement only in those states which are poor in procurement, in the case of those states which are performing well, like Haryana, Punjab, the states should do the procurement. The morcha said it was evident that the three farm laws enacted by the government carry forward some of these recommendations “as these compromise on FCI, MSP, PDS and procurement of foodgrains”. It said the government claims that the cost of handling food storage is huge, Rs 37/kg for rice and Rs 27/kg for wheat. For the last several years, GOI has not cleared all dues of this FCI expense as a result of which the total debt on FCI today has reached Rs 3.81 lakh crore. It pays more than 8% interest on this. On the contrary, for the last several years the budget of the FCI has been reduced.

The Times of India

2021-04-06

Amritsar