New Delhi:
Farmer representatives protesting the center’s farm laws refused to share a meal with Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Piyush Goyal and Som Prakash during the seventh round of talks on Monday, declaring: “Eat your food and we will eat our food. “
Photographs inside Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan, where the talks are taking place, showed farmers sitting on chairs (and others squatting on the floor of the hallway) having their lunch at a nearby table.
The lunch break in each round of negotiations between farmer leaders and the center has become a relative indicator of progress in resolving the week-long stalemate.
Headlines made headlines last week after the two sides agreed to share bread.
The Minister of Agriculture, Narendra Singh Tomar, and the Minister of Railways, Piyush Goyal, were invited to share the langar. Images showed ministers being cared for rotis with lentils and vegetables.
The images from that lunch were widely seen as a smooth advance in discussions that have stalled on the farmers’ core demands: the removal of farm laws and a legal guarantee for the MSP.
However, the mood soured late in the day, with the two parties still unable to agree on central issues.
The center said it would not consider withdrawing the laws (calling the process “long and arduous”), but once again offered to form a committee to discuss these pending lawsuits. It also offered farmers a written guarantee for MSP, as opposed to the legal one they have been demanding.
The lunch break in each round of conversations is considered a relative indicator of progress in resolving the confrontation.
The farmers, who have repeatedly rejected both proposals (last month, sources quoted union representatives as saying “now is not the time for a committee”), said “we will not get our movement back.”
Despite the continuing gulf between the two parties, Tomar later told reporters that the meeting ended on a “very good note” as it announced an “agreement” on two of the four demands.
He said that an amendment to the electricity bill would be withdrawn and that criminal provisions for stubble burning would not apply to farmers. However, both issues were seen as already resolved, and the center had already indicated that it will accept these demands.
Tens of thousands of farmers across the country are up in arms over three laws passed amid chaos and chaos in September. They say the laws will deny them guaranteed prices (MSP) and leave them at the mercy of corporate companies looking to enter the agricultural space.
However, the center insists that the laws are beneficial as they allow farmers to cut out intermediaries and sell their products in markets and at (potentially higher) prices of their choice. Farmers were previously tied to local and government-controlled wholesale markets, or mandis.
.
