Farmers Movement Archive

RSS leader urges Union govt to end deadlock with farmers

Sindri: Lack of trust between the Centre and the farmers is the primary reason for the prolonged farmers’ agitation over the new farm laws at the Delhi border and the government needs to come forward to bridge the trust gap to end the stalemate, RSS ideologue and activist K N Govindacharya said on Sunday. Speaking to TOI on the sidelines of ‘Shiksha Vikash Sangam’ organised by a private body at Chetna Mahavidyalaya in Sindri, Govindacharya said, “Big market players use both ethical and unethical means to weed out small players from the market and the legitimate psychological fears being expressed by the farm leaders about the privatization of the sector is not mere conjectures but based on the experience of the last 30 years. The government needs to take the initiative to break the logjam.” He further said as a confidence-building measure, the government should unilaterally announce a legal framework to guarantee the MSP. “Repeated talks with farmers could not yield any result as the government failed to come up with new proposals for the farmers,” he said, adding, “Allowing the agitation to continue is neither in favour of the government nor the farmers.” He also said the government should set up a tribunal with representatives of farm bodies for arbitration in case of disputes between private mandis and those involved in contract farming. “There was no need to remove rice and wheat from essential commodities in a haste and the government should bring them back under the purview of the Essential Commodities Act,” the RSS leader said. He, however, mentioned that the farmers were carrying out such “a peaceful agitation for so long is a unique example in Indian polity”. While replying to a query, Govindacharya said he was in favour of decentralized economic development in India. “We, under the banner of Bharat Vikash Sangam, are working towards the goal of ‘Sabko Bhojan-Sabko Kaam’ (food and work for all) and we have divided the entire nation into 127 eco-agro-climatic zones for preparing area-specific developmental plans after taking into account the locally available resources and climate. So far, we have created development clusters in 40 districts and work in 150 other districts is in an advanced stage. We aim to prepare a list of 10,000 activists for coordination among all the 127 nodal centres for working in sectors like health, education, employment, agriculture and animal husbandry, among others,” he added.

The Times of India

2021-02-08

Ranchi