Farm Leaders Pandher and Dallewal Misleading Gullible Farmers

Farm Leaders Pandher and Dallewal Misleading Gullible Farmers

The farmers must realize that their demands will never be accepted if they do not intensify their protest in Delhi.

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By Rakesh Raman

In the ongoing protest by Indian farmers, the farm leaders of the campaign are holding meaningless meetings with the government ministers without getting their demands accepted.

After holding secret meetings on February 8, February 12, and February 15 with central government ministers – Arjun Munda, Piyush Goyal, and Nityanand Rai – the farm leaders held another meeting on February 18 which went past midnight.

However, these ministers in the government of prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi did not commit anything on farmers’ demands. In other words, it was once again a futile meeting.

Sarvan Singh Pandher, coordinator of the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM) which is leading the protest, and Jagjit Singh Dallewal, president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Sidhupur) from Punjab represented farmers in the meetings.

Although there are many other farm organizations in Punjab, they are not participating in this protest. And there is almost no support from farmers who are in other parts of the country.

[ Video: ਕਿਸਾਨ ਆਗੂਆਂ ਪੰਧੇਰ ਅਤੇ ਡੱਲੇਵਾਲ ‘ਤੇ ਕਦੇ ਵੀ ਭਰੋਸਾ ਨਾ ਕਰੋ ]

After each meeting, these naive farm leaders say that the government is thinking to accept their demands. But the Modi government is, in fact, hoodwinking these foolish farm leaders so that they do not go to Delhi for their protest.

Thousands of aggrieved farmers from Punjab are camping on Haryana-Punjab borders to move toward the national capital to hold a perpetual protest. However, the farm leaders are stopping them presumably under government pressure or a secret deal with the government.

Since farm leaders Pandher and Dallewal are not sharing the recordings of their meetings with government ministers and these meetings are not live-streamed transparently, there is a possibility that they are telling lies in the press conferences.

As the Modi regime does not want farmers to reach Delhi for protest, it is misusing brutal police forces of Haryana and Punjab to attack farmers with tear gas shells dropped from drones and lethal weapons to stop their entry into Delhi.

Farmers claim that in the past few days dozens of protesters have been injured and hospitalized because police have been attacking them mercilessly. The farmers have been waiting at Haryana-Punjab borders since February 13, but the two farm leaders Pandher and Dallewal are not allowing them to go to Delhi.

Therefore, it is likely that in collusion with the government, these farm leaders are dissuading farmers who want to hold their agitation in Delhi and not allowing them to move toward the national capital under the pretext that the government is considering their demands. 

Although farmers have multiple demands including legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) for certain crops, withdrawal of police cases against farmers, waiving of farmers’ loans, the implementation of the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations on crop prices, pension for farmers and farm labourers, and so on.

In their list of demands, the protesting farmers also demanded the arrest of Modi’s minister Ajay Mishra who is accused of a conspiracy to murder a few farmers in 2021 at Lakhimpur Kheri in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) state. However, farmers were shocked to know that, let alone arresting the minister, even his accused son was released from jail. 

In a nutshell, the Modi government did not accept any of the farmers’ demands during the past three years of their on-and-off protests. But now instead of going to Delhi for holding their planned protest, the weak farm leaders have decided to wait for a couple of more days until the government delivers its decision.

In the long meeting of February 18, the farm leaders – who are almost illiterate – could discuss only the MSP issue and the government ministers did not promise any legal guarantee on MSP as farmers have been demanding. No other demand of farmers was discussed in the meeting.

Clearly, it was another wasteful meeting as the government succeeded once again to deceive the farmers with some vague assurance without considering all their demands.

Now the farm leaders Pandher and Dallewal are making misleading statements in front of the media persons and not telling the truth about their clandestine meetings with government ministers.

The farmers must realize that their demands will never be accepted if they do not intensify their protest in Delhi with the help of more farmers and farm organizations from different parts of the country.

By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of the humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.