TENS of thousands of protesting Indian farmers will continue their stand-off at entry points to the Indian capital, their leaders said on Saturday, as talks with the government about contentious farming laws ended in a deadlock. During the meeting, farmers’ group went on ‘maun vrat’, asked the govt to answer in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to their demand for repealing new farm laws. The agitating farmers have urged the Union government to assemble a special session of Parliament to revoke the three farm laws, besides threatening to hold a nationwide protest on December 8. Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal slammed Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Si-ngh over his recent meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and accused him of “reciting the BJP’s script” for allegedly linking farmers’ agitation to national security. The farmers have been parked at Delhi’s borders for 10 days. The stand-off started after police refused them entry so they could stage a protest in the capital against laws passed in September to deregulate the marketing and storage of farm produce. The protesting farmers are demanding a rollback of the three laws they say will impact their income, benefit big corporations and dismantle a procurement system that guarantees them minimum prices for their produce and protects them from market vagaries. Farmers are calling the new laws as “black laws”.
India’s government says the laws will increase farm productivity and free farmers from the clutches of middlemen. Currently, India is going through several challenges and one of the prevalent challenges is the BJP government itself. As the governments attention is entirely over converting the secular Indian into a Hindu state, eradicating the diversity and little attention over the problems of common people. Farmers of Punjab, India play a crucial role in spinning the wheel of India’s stumbling economy, but unfortunately the central government is not somber enough to review their decision and consider the demands of common people. Before India’s farmers rose up in anger, presenting an increasingly difficult challenge to a government already grappling with the coronavirus outbreak and a devastating economic slump. Experts say majority of the farmers in Punjab are Sikhs, and currently the BJP government is intentionally designing such policies that are posing existential threat to the minorities.
