A day after the brief arrest of representatives of several farmers’ organisations near Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, a march across States and aiming to converge on Delhi on July 18 moves on.
Those briefly arrested and released later on Thursday include social activist Medha Patkar, CPI(M)’s Hannan Mollah and Subhashini Ali, and farmer leader Raju Shetty. The Swaraj Abhiyan of Yogendra Yadav is also part of the march.
The march was planned in the wake of five farmers dying in police firing in Mandsaur recently. The march will visit Maharashtra and also go to poll-bound Gujarat and Rajasthan. Key demands of farmers in M.P. are a good minimum support price (MSP), which should be 1.5-times the cost of production and a complete loan waiver. Around this region in M.P. alone, 41 farmers have committed suicide recently.
“They had bumper crops this year, unlike last year. But while they got ₹6,000 per quintal on garlic last year, the government offered ₹2,000 this year. In effect, they do not get even ₹1,000 as the government is not buying their produce,” Ms. Ali said.
The same was the case with onions, she added, underlining that farmers were facing a crisis as their produce was not being sold.
She said that even as their demands had not been met, there was increasing “repression” from the government.
“This is an area where opium is also grown with a licence. The State government has begun to make lists of farmers allegedly involved in opium smuggling, and this has become a new way of repression,” Ms. Ali said. She added that the demands here were a hike in MSP, loan waiver, withdrawal of cases against farmers and an end to “repression.”
