NEW DELHI: “If we have the power to elect the Prime Minister, we also have the power to bring him down. Our condition has gone from bad to worse in the last few years. Despite the government’s tall promises, it gave us nothing,” warned Om Prakash from Uttar Pradesh. The septuagenarian farmer from Bareilly summed up the anger among farmers, who have congregated at the heart of the capital in Ramlila Maidan. Farmers from north, south, east and west India are in Delhi to ‘wake up’ the government for relieving them of the agrarian crisis which they have been pushed into.
“The politics of ‘mandir-masjid’ (temple-mosque) cannot run this country. The government needs to instead focus on the crisis we are facing. The Centre is looting us, and it needs to stop,” Bhagwan Singh, another farmer from UP, said.From below the Vindhyas, Shekhar and Palani from Tamil Nadu carried the skulls of four debt-burdened farmers who ended their lives after being unable to pay off their loans. “We are all here for the same goal that the government should hear our voices,” said Ayyakkannu, leader of National South Indian Rivers Inter-Linking Farmers Association.
The main demands include adopting two private members bill in the joint session of Parliament — The Farmers’ Right to Guaranteed Remunerative Minimum Support Prices for Agricultural Commodities Bill and The Farmers’ Freedom from Indebtedness Bill — for freeing farmers from debt and for providing remunerative prices of agricultural products. “We have been agitating for loan waivers and better MSP,” said Jairam, who came from Tapi in Gujarat.
Several farmers lamented how they have become landless and are working for meagre wages. “We are landless, homeless. What will the government give us?” asked Krishnadev Sharmas from Gaya in Bihar.
Dase Gowda from Hasaan in Karnataka and his group nodded in unison to assert that farmers would not relent till the government hears their grievances.
No to Bullet train
Farmers from Maharashtra’s Palghar town also had their own grievance — PM Narendra Modi’s ambitious Bullet train project. These farmers want to save their land, which is likely to be acquired for the project.