The Farm Agitation Will Not End As Farmers Reject Supreme Court Committee
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-01-12 14:30:56
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The Supreme Court's intervention amounted to zilch as the protesting farmers rejected the committee it has formed. They said that all the four members of the committee (Bhupinder Singh Mann of Bhartiya Kisan Union, Anil Ghanwat of Shetkeri Sangthana, Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati) are not acceptable to them. Balbir Singh Rajewal of Bhartiya Kisan Union said "we had said yesterday itself that we won't appear before any such committee. Our agitation will go on as usual. All the members of this Committee are pro-government and had been justifying the laws of the Government", while Krantikari Kisan Union chief Darshan Pal said "we had issued a press note last night stating that we won't accept any committee formed by Supreme Court for mediation. We were confident that Centre will get a committee formed through Supreme Court to take the burden off their shoulders".
With this, whatever little hopes that the farm impasse might be resolved by the Supreme Court's intervention have vanished. The farmers have further hardened their stand and have also said that they will not talk to the committee even if the members are changed. One feels that the Supreme Court has misunderstood the problem. It is not and it was never about the laws. It is about the political constituency which the farmers represent and they are resenting the way the laws were forced upon them without consultation. The Supreme Court has added fuel to the fire by making the same mistake. It has tried to force the committee upon the unions without consulting with them about its composition.
Now we come to the main point in this debate which might be raised by the Supreme Court. It might well say that "we are the Supreme Court and we will decide who will sit in the committee. We do not need to consult the unions for that". Well, in that case, the government can also say that "we are the government and we will draft the laws and get them passed in Parliament. We do not need to consult anyone for that". But do democracies work that way?
Both the government and the Supreme Court have got it wrong. The government wants to smash age-old stranglehold of the middlemen over the farmers and wants to usher in modern marketing principles in agriculture. It made the mistake of undermining the inherent political strength (built by the constant buttering they received from successive governments in the past) of the farmers in Punjab and to a lesser extent in Haryana by not engaging them in consultations over the laws. Now it needs to wriggle out of the situation and thinks the Supreme Court will help it out. The court has tried, although unconstitutionally. But one thinks it is going to be a flop show.
