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Farmers in India have shut down swaths of the country’s transport, shops and markets as they intensified their protests against new farm laws by launching a nationwide strike.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers blocked all roads to the capital, Delhi, for most of the day, and across the country demonstrated on rail lines and roads and called for shops to close, in an attempt to pressure the government. to repeal the new farm laws, they say. It will leave them ravaged by poverty and at the mercy of corporations.
For more than a week, thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, have camped on the outskirts of Delhi, sitting next to police barricades on the three main roads leading to the capital, saying they will not move until the requirements are met. three agricultural laws. repealed and they are assured a minimum price for their crops. A meeting last Friday between farmers and the government lasted for seven hours but failed to end the stalemate.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the laws in September, saying they would reform an archaic and outdated system and give farmers more control over the prices of their crops. However, the farmers began to protest, saying that they had not been consulted and that their livelihoods were ruined.
Agriculture employs more than 40% of India’s workforce, but it is also an industry plagued by poverty, underdevelopment and suffering. India has one of the highest farmer suicide rates in the world.
More than 450 unions and farmers’ organizations supported Tuesday’s national strike, which saw police deployed across the country to keep the unrest under control.
Stationed on the Delhi border was Kuldip Malana, 41, a farmer from the Bant district of Haryana, who has been traveling back every night to collect food supplies and bring home anyone who has fallen ill in the protests.
“For the past 25 years, farmers have suffered and the government has not cared about us, even when so many are committing suicide,” Malana said. “They have not provided cold storage for our crops to keep them fresh, so sometimes we have to sell our vegetables for 1 rupee. They have not given us enough water for our crops ”.
He added: “They haven’t thought of us in years, and suddenly they come up with reforms that have nothing to do with helping farmers and only benefit large corporations. These laws are suicide for all of us. “
Malana and other farmers proclaimed the strike a success, after Interior Minister Amit Shah agreed to meet with farmers’ leaders at his residence at 7 pm on Tuesday. “There is no middle ground. We will simply demand ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from the interior minister at today’s meeting, ”Rudru Singh Mansa, a farmer leader, told reporters. Farmers are also due to have a meeting with the government on Wednesday to continue discussions.
Political tensions also escalated around the protests. The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of the Delhi government claimed that Delhi’s Prime Minister Arvind Kejriwal had been placed under de facto “house arrest” by the Delhi Police, which is under the federal jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior. , to prevent you from joining the protests in support of farmers. “They wouldn’t let me go, but I was praying for the movement to be successful,” Kejriwal said.
Punjab Prime Minister Amarinder Singh reiterated his support for farmers and called on the central government to listen to their demands. “If I had been in his place, it wouldn’t have taken me a minute to accept my mistake and repeal the laws,” Singh said.
Umendra Dutt, founder of the Kheti Virasat Mission, a popular movement for sustainable agriculture and food security in Punjab state, said the government had “grossly underestimated” farmers and that the protests were the culmination of “40 years with anger and disenchantment over a broken system that has bankrupted farmers, destroyed food security and sparked an ecological crisis in India. “
Dutt said that “a paradigm shift” was needed to reform the agricultural system in India and make it sustainable, but that these new laws were simply “manipulating a broken system that is responsible for the suicides of farmers in India, has looted natural resources and poisoned the food and ecosystem of India. “
