Policies are anti-farming, says Hardik

June 15, 2017 10:12 pm | Updated 11:36 pm IST - AHMEDABAD

Farmers in the entire country are in distress because of the anti-farming policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at Centre, and in all States where it is in power, said Hardik Patel, Gujarat’s Patidar quota agitation leader, who was recently prevented by the Madhya Pradesh police from visiting Mandsaur, where farmers’ agitation turned violent.

“I just wanted to meet the families of those killed because four of the five persons killed were from the Patidar community,” he said, adding, “This is the most anti-farmers government at Centre in the country.”

According to him, farmers remain the most negligent segment in any BJP ruled state because the party leadership is in the hands of a few businessmen and industrial groups, whose empires flourish at the cost of farmers landless people.

“In Gujarat, we are organising farmers and poor people at village level, creating awareness about how the government is neglecting their demands and issues,” he said.

Asked about whether debt of farmers should be waived off, Mr Patel, who spearheads a state wide mass agitation to seek quota for Patidars in Gujarat, said there was nothing wrong in waiving off loans of farmers.

“If the government can waive off huge loans taken by industrialists and businessmen, then why it cannot do the same for farmers? What is wrong in it,” Mr Patel asked, adding “the loans taken by farmers from nationalised banks and also from cooperative credit societies should be waived off.”

“The real tragedy is that the farmers are neglected by the governments and exploited by the traders, who lower the procurement prices the moment farmers harvest their crops,” he said, slamming the extant system of procurement prices of agriculture commodities.

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