NEW DELHI: On second day of farmers protest in Delhi, children of Maharashtra farmers who committed suicide and farmers from Uttar Pradesh narrated their ordeals. Also, Mani Shankar Aiyar, senior Congress party leader joined the protest and blamed the union government for not addressing the demands of farmers. “These poor people are wandering between Delhi and Chennai but not getting any decent answer, so they have again come here,” Aiyar said.
The children of famers who have committed suicide gathered again at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday and narrated their ordeal through a play. Describing their sufferings, Ashok Patil, one of the children said, “A number of politicians have visited us in our Ashram and made a lot of promises. But all we get to see is a picture of the politician in the next day’s newspapers.” “Do they visit us to help us or to click selfies with us,” he asked.
On Wednesday farmers from Uttar Pradesh also raised their issues and said that government is unnecessarily putting financial burden on potato farmers asking them to keep the crop in cold storage without helping them financially. “The government wants us to store our crop in cold storage. But the truth is that the price our crop fetches us is way less than the cost of keeping them in cold storage,” Aamir, leader of potato farmers from Uttar Pradesh said.
The protest was also addressed by a wife of a farmer from Tamil Nadu who committed suicide after he couldn’t repay loan. She claimed that his husband committed suicide because he was harassed by the bank officials for not repaying the loan. “The bank officials asked my husband how he was able to buy clothes for me if he was unable to repay his loans. Why is it always the poor who are humiliated, what about the rich that run away with crores of rupees?” On Monday, at least a 100 farmers came back to the national capital for a second protest stint.