It has been over a month that the protesting farmers have camped themselves on Delhi’s borders amidst dropping temperatures to get all three new laws on farmers repealed. Security remained tight at the border points in Delhi and neighbouring areas with hundreds of personnel deployed at Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday hit out at the Centre over the ongoing agitation against the farm reforms by saying that farmers should keep walking and not be scared of the government. Taking to Twitter, the Congress leader tweeted a poem which was a modified version of Dwarkaprasad Maheshwari’s Veer Tum Badhe Chalo (Brave hearts you keep walking ahead).
Soon after the Central government showed its inclination to meet the farmers again, several farmer groups on Saturday had written a letter to the Union Agriculture Ministry and thereby accepted the Central government’s invitation for dialogue in order to end the ongoing agitation against the government’s three agricultural reforms. Farmers’ group have proposed December 29 (tomorrow) as the date for the sixth round of talks. Earlier, five meetings held between Union ministers and farmer groups remained inconclusive.
The farmer groups who are majorly from the State of Punjab, have also placed a four-point agenda on Saturday and asked the government for the removal of the reforms and incorporate changes in the draft ElectricityAmendment Bill 2020 so that the interests of the farmers are protected. In that letter they warned that a tractor march will be held from the Singhu border on December 30 if the government does not talk of removing the reforms during the December 29 meet. The government had offered some amendments in the laws, but unions are asking to repeal the laws. From the second week of December, farmer unions took over highway toll plazas in Haryana and allowed free movement of vehicles. Hence, today’s meet is becoming crucial.
In a sudden development Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with his senior ministers on Sunday visited Singhu border where thousands of farmers are protesting. Farmers camping at various Delhi borders are there not for a picnic in this cold but to seek answers from the Centre to their grievances.
The farmers’ protest is an ongoing protest against the three farm acts which were passed by the Parliament of India in September 2020. In fact the protest began in Punjab in August this year but escalated when the farmers decided to move to Delhi in late November. Since November 26, the farmers are at the borders of Delhi demanding that the Union government repeal all the three Acts on farmers. The acts have been described as “anti-farmer laws” by many farmer unions, and politicians from the opposition also say it would leave farmers at the “mercy of corporate”. On the contrary, the Union government maintains that they will make it effortless for farmers to sell their produce directly to big buyers, and stated that the protests are based on misinformation and politicising.
Immediately after the Acts were promulgated the farmers’ unions began holding local protests, mostly in Punjab. After two months of protests, farmer unions— notably from Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, began a movement named Dilli Chalo (Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose call – “Let’s go to Delhi”), in which tens of thousands of farmer unions marched towards the nation’s capital. The Indian government ordered the police and law enforcement of various States to restrict the farmer unions from progressing by using water cannons, batons, tear gas and rocks in an effort to prevent the farmer unions from entering into Haryana first and then New Delhi.
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have tried reassuring the farmers that the government has no plans to end the government procurement system, nor the minimum support price (MSP) policy. With no clarity by the Union government given to the farmers before presenting the Bill in the Parliament, the fear, misconceptions persist and the two loggerheadparties whether the farmers or the Union government have not had meaningful negotiations on the table.
Despite five rounds of talks with two of them involving a three-minister panel of the Union government and a few dozen representatives of the farmers’ unions, the deadlock remains. The Centre is also said to have offered a written guarantee that MSP will not be withdrawn. Farmers’ lobby is not ready to buy that and demands the repeal of the recently passed Farm Bills. The Union government cannot keep procrastinating on this issue and has to make a decision and make it public very soon. The year 2020 has been a traumatic one for all and any continuation of defiance, arrogance and inconsistency on decision-making may not give a positive signal for 2021, the year of hope.
