Leaders who come to power through illegal means have no concern for voters, farmers and Dalits, Sarvoodaya Karnataka Paksha president Devanur Mahadeva said.
Addressing a gathering of farmers at a convention organised by the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and Hasiru Sene here on Monday, he said politicians will no feelings for the farmers when money, corruption, red-tapism and nepotism rule at Vidhana Soudha.
“We have to do soul-searching and overcome our differences to unite and come under a political banner to protest in the larger interest of farmers,” Mahadeva said.
Melukote MLA K S Puttanaiah (Sarvodaya party) said the farmers’ agitation started in 1980s and activists used to give memorandums demanding successive governments to fulfil their demands. But today there is a necessity for leaders of the farmer community to enter politics, as governments have been following anti-farmer policies, Puttanaiah said.
He said the government should fix wages for agricultural farmers on the lines of state government employees.
There is a severe crisis for farmers nearly 4,000 crore coconut and 2 crore arecanut trees worth `50,000 crore have been damaged. “The investments in these crops and losses have to be measured by policy makers, but they only announce subsidy and cheat farmers by giving reports in English which most of them cannot follow; this has to change,” Puttanaiah said.
There are commercial crops, horticultural crops and dry crops, and the government should form individual policies accordingly. The Centre Agriculture Price Committee is only an eyewash, he added.
Puttanaiah said Narendra Modi only helped industrialists.
The new programme of giving agricultural land within 24 hours for industrial purposes was an attempt to make India like New York, he said.