New Delhi
Farm organisations across India called for a nationwide strike on Tuesday as the farmers’ protests against new laws liberalising agricultural markets spread across India.
In eastern and western states, farmers blocked roads and squatted on railway tracks, delaying hordes of people getting to work, and preventing perishable produce from reaching markets.
Farmers from the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, neighbouring New Delhi, have been at the vanguard of the agitation since last month, and have set up protest camps in and around the capital.
“We will not allow the government to change the rules because they want to hurt farmers’ income by filling the pockets of big companies,” said Gurwinder Singh, a 66-year-old farmer from Punjab, a state known as the food bowl of India.
The reforms enacted in September loosened rules around the sale, pricing and storage of farm produce that have protected farmers from an unfettered free market for decades.
Assured of floor prices, most currently sell the bulk of their produce at government-controlled wholesale markets, known as mandis.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said the reforms would not hurt farmers’ incomes. More talks between the government and farmer organisations are due on Wednesday.
The farmers say the laws threaten their livelihoods. Although various farmer unions have backed the demonstration, the protest is largely led by growers from Punjab and Haryana in India’s north.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and leaders of the protesting farmers’ unions have held several rounds of talks but a deadlock persists over the parliamentary bills passed in September.
Indian farmers have been struggling for years due to low crop prices and rising costs, demonetisation and widespread droughts despite government subsidies and income tax exemptions.
Many farmers have fallen into debt, leading to a rise in farmer suicide rates in recent years.
India’s grain bowl states of Punjab and neighbouring Haryana also fear that if big institutions start purchasing directly from farmers, the state governments will lose out on the tax that these buyers have to pay at wholesale markets.
One of the main concerns is that the ambiguity surrounding minimum support prices (MSP) and farmers worry the Modi government will do away with it altogether. The MSP serves as a safety net for the farmers in case prices for certain crops fall. Removing it would allow large corporations to set prices, making farmers vulnerable to exploitation.
The farmers are also worried that the government giving up its power to prevent hoarding and controlling price inflation keeps them at large corporations’ mercy.
Meantime, social media has fanned sympathy for the farmers’ cause among the Indian diaspora abroad. During recent days, thousands of people have protested in support of the farmers outside the Indian embassy in central London.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, protest sites around New Delhi have turned into camps, with entire families cooking and sleeping in the open and Sikh religious organisations were providing them with face masks, water and food.—Reuters
