Updated: September 24, 2020 5:33:11 pm
Shiromani Akali Dal MLA Manpreet Ayali (right) and his supporters hold a tractor rally against agricultural bills in Ludhiana on September 23, 2020 (Express photo: Gurmeet Singh).
In its opinion article in The Indian Express, Sukhbir Singh Badal, Chairman of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), explains why one of the BJP’s oldest allies and a key founding member of the NDA had to resign from the government.
“The whole ‘Assured Procurement’ system of Indian Government agencies like the Food Corporation of India is at stake,” says Badal in relation to the farmers’ protests. “I begged the government to insert constitutional and legislative guarantees in the bills as a commitment to the farmers on the continuity of official acquisitions in the MSP”, writes Badal.
According to Badal, the government, first verbally and then in writing, gave guarantees in this regard. But it refused to incorporate these guarantees into law. Farmers were unwilling to buy any government guarantees except legislative clauses.
Finally, discovering that there was no sympathetic ear in government for either the millions of working farmers or the serious and passionate pleas of one of its own key allies, the SAD decided to withdraw from the government “to save the farmers.”
“The SAD could not be part of anything that, in their opinion, had the potential to destroy the already besieged peasantry in the country, especially in Punjab.”
Badal says that in the proposed system “as part of their marketing strategy, the big corporate sharks will initially offer prices considerably higher than the official MSP.” The “simple hearted farmer” will fall for the hook and this will look good for the first few years.
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But the net result would be that this would decimate the existing marketing regime and the farmer would ultimately be left completely at the mercy of the private sharks. Then there will be no one to save farmers from these sharks.
“We saw this strategy employed by Jio’s mobile phones. It was practically free at first. But once the companies end the competition and monopolize the market, the consumer eats out of the hand ” he writes.
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