Farmers to Resume Agitation Against Modi Government
As the farmers have lost momentum and their protests have been largely directionless, the resumption of their agitation is not expected to have any impact on the Modi government.
By Rakesh Raman
Irked by the reluctance of the government to meet their demands, the farmers have decided to resume their protests that they had suspended in December last year.
The united body of farmers – Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) – announced Monday (March 14) that the farmers will hold a nationwide demonstration on March 21 as the government of prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi has failed to fulfil its commitments made to farmers.
Although PM Modi had mechanically withdrawn the contentious farm laws last year to avoid resistance from farmers in the Assembly elections, the Modi government did not accept any other demand of farmers.
Farmers have been demanding a legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) for certain crops and withdrawal of police cases against farmers who participated in the year-long protest that began in November 2020.
The protesting farmers also demand the arrest of minister Ajay Mishra who is accused of a conspiracy to murder the farmers on October 3 last year at Lakhimpur Kheri in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) state.
However, SKM was shocked to know that, let alone arresting the minister, even his accused son was released from jail. The SKM leaders had urged the voters to defeat the candidates of Modi’s BJP in the recently held state Assembly elections – particularly in UP and Uttarakhand.
However, the BJP won comfortably. It showed that farmers have hardly any influence on the voters and their protests were not quite impactful.
Farmers – mainly from Punjab, Haryana, and UP states – had protested for over a year against the three farm laws announced by the Modi government.
But they had ended their agitation abruptly, as some of the cunning farm leaders decided to betray the protesting farmers with the aim to contest the Punjab election.
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Rural Resistance: Protests by Farmers in India Raman Media Network (RMN) Company – which is working in diversified content creation, management, and distribution businesses on a global scale – has been running the “Rural Resistance: Protests by Farmers” editorial section. This section under the RMN news service has been created to cover the agricultural reforms, farm laws, and the ongoing farmers’ protests in India. It carries news, views, and related developments and invites farmers as well as farming experts to share their views which will be published on the site. You can click here to visit the section. |
As the farmers have lost momentum and their protests have been largely directionless, the resumption of their agitation is not expected to have any impact on the Modi government.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
