oppn parties Farmers Are Not Enemies Of The Nation

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
Farmers Are Not Enemies Of The Nation

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2021-08-31 08:47:56

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.

What happened at Karnal during the protest by farmers was avoidable. It does not behove a government to treat farmers as enemies of the state and come down heavily and violently on them for exercising their right of peaceful protest against a government policy that they feel is inimical to their interests (the protest in Karnal was against a BJP meeting). As it is, the farm bills were first imposed as ordinances without taking the farmers into confidence and then rushed through parliament without allowing the people's representatives to debate their finer points. The extended round of talks that followed after the farmers decided to hold protests did not achieve anything as both parties were adamant at not conceding much ground.

The onus is on the government to bring the farmers to its side. The mistrust has grown ever since the bills were passed because of the fact that they were rushed in without wide consultations. The farm bodies are now bent on proving their might by not agreeing to anything less than a complete repealing of the bills and a legal guarantee that the MSP system will continue and even expanded for more agricultural products. Although the government has repeatedly said that it has no plans to discontinue the MSP system of procurement and just wants to eliminate middlemen and provide other avenues of selling their products to the farmers, it is clear that the farmers have been brainwashed into thinking that the bills will leave them at the mercy of large corporations.

It is sad that the farm bodies are not willing to discuss the bills clause by clause, as offered by the government. The insistence on repealing the bills smacks of blackmail. Not all clauses in the bills are contentious. If a clause by clause discussion is held, one is sure that some way out will emerge. But for that to happen, the government will have to build trust. The events in Karnal showed that the government is not interested. Instead of bringing about a change of heart among the farmers, incidents like Karnal will widen the gap and the government will be left with no other option but to repeal the laws. That would mean a huge setback for reforms in the agriculture sector.