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04-03-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ SHAMBHU: Indian farmers plan to march to the capital New Delhi on Wednesday as they push their demands for higher crop prices, a protest leader said, after several rounds of failed talks.
Farm union leaders are seeking guarantees of state support or a minimum purchase price for farmers’ produce.
“On March 6, farmers will come to Delhi from all over the country by train, bus and air,” protest leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal told reporters.
He said farmers would also block railway lines across the country on March 10.
The protests began in early February with hundreds of farmers in Punjab aiming to take their campaign to Delhi. They were blocked by police and paramilitary troops at Shambhu, at the border with neighboring Haryana state, about 200 km (125 miles) from the capital.
The government announces support prices for more than 20 crops each year, but state agencies buy only rice and wheat at the support level, which benefits only about 6% of farmers who raise those two crops.
In 2021, when the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi repealed farm laws, the government said it would set up a panel of growers and government officials to find ways to ensure support prices for all farm produce.
Meanwhile, when India’s powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed in 2021 to repeal three farm laws aimed at overhauling the antiquated agriculture sector, he seemed to have won over farmers who had been protesting for 
over 12 months but just over two years later, farmers are on the warpath again in the politically sensitive north of the world’s most populous nation, seeking legal guarantees for a minimum purchase price for all crops. The protest comes just months before a general election due by May.
Although the farmers’ protest is confined to the breadbasket state of Punjab for now, their complaints of falling incomes resonate more widely, highlighting a perception in India’s huge rural hinterland that Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have done too little to support the farming community and raise living standards.
Over 40% of India’s 1.4 billion people are dependent on agriculture and many say they have suffered economically under Modi at the expense of their urban counterparts.
While pollsters say Modi’s image as a strong no-nonsense leader and his muscular brand of majoritarian Hindu nationalism will almost certainly give him a rare third term in office, the discontent of farmers will be a headache for years to come.
“Since India has failed to move people out of agriculture, unlike most Asian countries, income levels have dropped, and that is why the anger is spilling over,” said Uday Chandra, assistant professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar.
