Amid victory revelry, the clamour for a law on MSP grows louder
New Delhi: As farmers across the three border protest sites came together on Friday to celebrate their historic victory after an equally historic year-long agitation — an outpouring of emotions was seen at the Ghazipur protest site. While the protesters reveled in their success — they have now just been emboldened to press on for the rest of their demands — the key among which is a legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price.
And as the celebrations gathered at Ghazipur on Friday, with tractors and trolleys reaching the main stage throughout the day, the clamour for a law on MSPonly grew louder with many of them explaining lucidly — what problems they face and how the legal guarantee will solve them.
Rajinder Kaur, from Uttarakhand's Uddham Singh Nagar, said she and her husband have been farming for all their lives and that while this victory was significant, half the battle still remained. She explained that without a legal guarantee on MSP, they are often harassed at mandis and pressured to sell their crops below the set price by citing one inane issue or the other.
"Sometimes, they will pick up the dhaan and say it is wet and we will only pay you Rs 1,200 for it when the MSP for dhaan is set at Rs 1,950 per quintal. They even deliberately pick up the grain from below the sack and make excuses saying the crop's quality is not good," she said, adding that this year's delayed monsoon had increased their burden.
The same problem was faced by Harbhajan Singh (67) — who is originally from a farmer family in Punjab. In the 1970s, his father had sold their land in Punjab to buy land in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur, where Harbhajan now farms around 25 acres of land.
"This time the rain ruined a lot of our crop but by the time we went to the mandis with our produce, we were only able to get Rs 600-700 per quintal. What will small farmers do in such cases? We are farmers, we just care about living in our fields breathing clean air and farming. We usually have a short window to go back and prepare the land for the next crop and in this pressure, many a time, farmers succumb to the pressure at mandis. At least, we will get something for this and we can go back to farming another batch," Harbhajan told Millennium Post, as BKU chief Rakesh Tikait's voice blared over loudspeakers: "We cannot go now. The legal guarantee on MSP and all our other demands must be met."
Along with the MSP law, the farmers also want the Electricity Amendment law to be repealed, false cases against farmers be withdrawn and Union MoS Ajay Mishra be sacked for his son's involvement in the Lakhimpur-Kheri massacre.
