Anniversary of Farmers Protest: SKM Awaits Fulfilment of Modi’s Promises

Farmer organisations affiliated with the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) demonstrated at the district headquarters of Haryana, Punjab, Bihar, Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh on Monday to remind the Centre about the consensus reached at the end of their historic movement in December 2021.

The demonstrations began with slogans of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ and ‘Kisano se wadakhilafinahichalegi’ (Farmers will not tolerate backtracking on promises). Farmer leaders also submitted a memorandum to President Droupadi Murmu through district magistrates. 

The Centre had sent a letter to SKM through Sanjay Agarwal, secretary to the Union ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare, assuring its leadership of forming a committee, including representatives from the Central and state governments, agriculture scientists and farmer leaders of different unions, with the mandate to devise methods to implement minimum support price (MSP).

The letter, dated December 9, 2021, also noted that the Centre, in principle, agreed to withdraw cases against farmers for participating in the movement and to appeal to states to do likewise. The Narendra Modi government also promised to discuss provisions impacting farmers in the Electricity Amendment Act. 

However, farmer leaders say none of the promises were fulfilled. 

“Farmers are still awaiting the fulfilment of promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding MSP as per the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations,” All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) Bihar vice-president Prabhuraj Narayan Rao told NewsClick.

“I have been working with Bihar’s sugarcane farmers. They are under tremendous distress due to the increasing prices of inputs like pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers, seeds and even diesel,” Rao, who led the protests in the West Champaran district, added. 

He said that Bihar farmers don’t get state-assisted prices for their produce. “We get Rs 335 per quintal, which isn’t enough to educate our children and look after sick family members. We want Rs 500 per quintal.” 

When asked about the cases, Rao said protesters are still fighting court cases for gheraoing district headquarters. “Even the Bihar government didn’t withdraw the cases despite sympathising with the farmer movement. We are still struggling.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Mahipal Chamrodi, part of protest in Haryana’s Yamunanagar, said that MSP is critical for crop diversification. 

“The government wants farmers to grow organic crops, particularly millets, and crops that consume less water. Without MSP, it is not possible to fill the gap. For example, If I sow Bajra, I would get three quintals on an acre. Whereas, I would easily get 25 quintals of rice in the same area,” he explained.

“Therefore, if farmers are assured MSP, they will also take the initiative. We also understand that the two-crop system of wheat and rice is dangerous for our farms in the long run.”

Farmer leaders also said that there have been concerted “efforts to smear the movement’s legacy”. 

AIKS finance secretary P Krishnaprasad mentioned, at least, “two recent incidents” to NewsClick that “suggest the government hasn’t accepted its defeat and continues to harass farmer leaders”. 

“First, the government registered an FIRagainst NewsClick because they covered the movement comprehensively. Second, several farmer leaders were stopped from flying abroad to participate in an international farmer conference,” he said. 

Recently, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Yudhvir Singh was stopped from travelling to Columbia to participate in a farmer conference. He was told that the National Investigation Agency had issued a lookout notice against him. Similarly, Arjun Baliyan, another BKU leader, was stopped from travelling to Nepal. 

The memorandum submitted to Murmu read: “After two years of the historic struggle, the Union government, with the aim of serving corporate forces, has made wild allegations against the farmer struggle in the ‘NewsClick FIR’ by painting the farmer struggle as anti-national and funded by foreign and terrorist forces.”

In the memorandum, SKM strongly rebuffed “such baseless allegations” and considered it “an assault on the media and the right of freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Constitution”. “We strongly allege a high-level conspiracy to tarnish any sort of mass resistance against the pro-corporate policies of the Union government.” 

The memorandum added: “In the context of the recent illegal detention of Yudhvir Singh, SKM has learned that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has issued lookout notices against SKM leaders in cases related to the Delhi struggle. SKM has demanded that Union home minister Amit Shah clarify whether the home ministry has such information. If so, be transparent in a democracy and make all such lookout notices public.”

SKM said that it considers any move to implicate farmer leaders in criminal cases “a blatant violation of the agreement made between the government and SKM” and a “breach of trust between the Union government and its people”. 

“The farmers’ struggle was a people’s uprising to protect the interests of farmers, agricultural workers and rural poor against the imposition of corporatisation of agriculture under domestic and foreign corporate capital. It was a patriotic movement like the struggle for independence against the British colonial rule and succeeded in forcing the Union government to withdraw the three pro-corporate farm Acts,” the memorandum added.