The protest has a point to make!

With dubious record of high rate of suicide by farmers in last one year despite promises of loan waiver in various elections, to farmers from Tamil Nadu –a southern state in India last year carrying the skulls all the way to India’s Capital of those who have committed suicide and staging a protest demanding that the Centre announce a drought relief package and loan waiver for peasants from the state, Indians has assumed that the protests have reached its plethora and now the government would act. However, now the farmers all around India have intensified their stir and that too in a unique manner. The world has been left wondering why the producers of vegetables, grains and milk are dumping their produce on the road. Why the farmers themselves are spilling milk on the roads? While some others have set up temporary shops to sell produce and milk at no cost to the buyers!

The Narendra Modi government appears to be taking the 10-day all India farmer agitation rather lightly. The 10 day agitation that has thrown life out of gear in Urban India, while the farmers in rural India are willing to incur losses has found the government taking rather an odd stance.

The comment by Union agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh who said the “strike is an exercise to get media attention. It requires some unusual deeds to appear in the media,” shows how the government is responding to the agitation.  Whatever might the government be doing behind closed door trying to end the stalemate; the statement of the minister gives an insight to the line of thought in corridors of the power. India indeed has a serious problem in hand.

This is not the first time, that the government has added insult to the injury. At times it has been caught napping too. Farmers in India have been giving bumper crop year after year, and the government after government has just converted this opportunity into a crisis. The problem of plenty is so enormous that government doesn’t have enough space to store the food grains most of which becomes a pray to rats, rodents, birds and even gets ruined in rains. Is the willing to address these problems?

Why are the farmers protesting? What ails the Indian system of farming? Hasn’t the government realized that farming is a sector that employs the majority of the India’s workforce and still remains an unorganized sector?  The farmers are asking for right prices for their produce, access to better storage facilities, an end to exploitation by middlemen and waiver of farm loans for the all farmers across India.

The farmer invest in crop without being sure of return on investment, and yet is able to give a bumper crop which doesn’t find the right price by the various government procurement agencies. The government’s approach towards the protest hasn’t found many takers. Its own ally, the Shiv Sena has said that the government will use the tactics of “love, price, penalty and then discrimination”. Shiv Sena is right as the ruling party this time too is only interested in converting these agitations into votes. However, this approach could prove to be a serious mistake for the ruling party Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) in a year when it faces elections in three states and the general elections are just 11 months away.

With focus on votes and no concern for farmers, the BJP has lost its focus on what should have been an overhaul of damaged farm infrastructure via reform based approach. Merely hiking the Minimum Support Price (MSP), offering waivers and giving farmers hope when elections are around the corner are not an attempt to cure the root cause.