Protesting farmers remind govt about its duty on hunger- younger lot of farmers are getting agitated by the government’s delaying tactics

The warning came a day after the younger generation of protesters pushed their way past barricades in variance with the SKM call to stay put at that point till further orders

A farmer wipes a tear as others shout slogans near the body of Galtan Singh, 57, a protester against the new farm laws who died at the Ghazipur border on Friday. NDTV quoted the office of the Ghaziabad chief medical officer to say he appeared to have died of the cold. In the morning the Twitter handle of MyGovIndia, a government platform, shared a poem “written by our beloved PM Narendra Modi”. Sounding like a party mouthpiece, it urged citizens: “Let’s start our first day of the new year with a mesmerizing and motivating poem ‘Abhi toh Suraj Uga hai’, written by our beloved PM Narendra Modi.” The platform also issued tweets hailing the new laws that the farmers are protesting against.PTI

Anita Joshua   |   TT   |   New Delhi   |   02.01.21  :  Farmer union leaders on Friday warned the government that it should not take their agitation lightly and think that it can be handled like the Shaheen Bagh protest against the new citizenship regime.

The warning came a day after the younger generation of protesters gathered at Shahjahanpur on the Rajasthan-Haryana border and pushed their way past barricades in variance with the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) call to stay put at that point till further orders.

Cautioning that the younger lot of farmers are getting agitated by the government’s delaying tactics, Yudhvir Singh of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (UP) said: “Our farmers cannot be trifled with. Don’t think that you will be able to end out movement like you did in the case of Shaheen Bagh.”

Singh was articulating a concern that the collective leadership of the movement might not be able to rein in the youngsters if the Narendra Modi dispensation continued to test their patience.

Given that the government has not moved an inch on the farmers’ two main demands pertaining to repealing the three new farm laws and enacting a legislation guaranteeing minimum support price for all crops, the SKM has drawn up a plan to carry forward the agitation right up to January 23.

While the blockade of Delhi will continue, parallel efforts will be made in the coming weeks to mobilise opinion across the country with a “Desh Jagriti Abhiyan”.

As the days pass, what the government has conceded on Thursday by accepting the farmers’ demands regarding exemption from the stubble burning fine and on the Electricity (Amendment) Bill is being regarded as small change.

The SKM has decided that if there is no progress on their two main demands at the next meeting on Monday, the twice-rescheduled tractor rally on the KMP Expressway (Western Peripheral Expressway) will be taken out on Wednesday.

Although the farmer unions had anticipated that the government would project the two concessions as meeting them halfway, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) said the narrative being built by the “pro-corporate intellectuals’’ would not convince the farming community.

Further, the committee sought to point out that the farm laws do not only affect the farmers but also the larger issue of food procurement as the limits on hoarding have been lifted, allowing private players to corner the food stock.

Questioning the Niti Aayog’s arguments against food procurement as India has a surplus of food stock, the AIKSCC pointed out that the country also has the maximum and rising number of hungry people.

Referring to the Hunger Index, the committee said India’s score had fallen from 38.8 in 2000 to 27.2 in 2020.

“The government of India is duty-bound to provide food security and these three Acts will erode the government’s food procurement and undermine the public distribution system, replace food production with commercial crops, and give freedom to the corporates to purchase, hoard and blackmarket food,” the AIKSCC said.