Farmers Movement Archive

Paddy to wheat, no retreat

BATHINDA: Six months on, the farmers’ struggle continues from paddy to wheat harvesting season. Even 11 rounds of talks couldn’t bring them back to fields. Their campaign against the corporate world has moved from half-yearly stocktaking on September 30 to March 31 annual performance audit. The farmers see World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank behind the Centres’ agri-marketing laws. The bills got through a heated debate in the Rajya Sabha on September 20 and Presidential approval on September 27, but on October 1, 2020, 30 farmer unions occupied railway tracks, toll plazas, corporate outlets, and refueling stations in protest, besides cordoning the homes of senior members of the Punjab BJP, a thing which is on for 180 days. The tracks were vacated but the hijacking of the toll plazas has cost the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) Rs 550 crore, so far. NHAI regional officer R P Singh said: “Punjab’s 25 national highway toll plazas are free for the past six months. Barring only a couple, those in Haryana are free, too, and our losses are mounting.” Besides Ambani and Adani, Vedanta and L&T (Larsen and Toubro) also had their property and business assets destroyed in Punjab, while the BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) blocked coal supplies to the thermal-electricity plants of these corporate houses. The latest in its line of fire is the Adani dry port at Kila Raipur in Ludhiana district. The farmer unions claim to have lost 300 comrades in these six months of protest. BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokri Kalan said: “We have stopped counting the months. We survived zero temperature and we’ll survive the 45-degree-Celsius heat, too, but not retreat until victory and the repeal of three laws. The government is free to test our patience. Like paddy harvesting, we have arrangements for wheat harvesting, too.”

The Times of India

2021-03-31

Amritsar