Daily Times

Despite massive protests by farmers around the Indian capital, PM Narendra Modi refused to repeal farm reforms and hailed them as means of providing better access to markets – both national and international.

PM Modi said that the farmers are “being misled” and that deregulation would benefit them.

Huge number of farmers from Punjab. the farming state, have been camping outside Delhi for five days, demanding the permission to protest in the city against the new agriculture laws. The angry farmers who have reached Delhi after braving water cannons, tear gas shelling and police barricades, have hinted towards cutting off the roads to the national capital, after Home Minister Amit Shah offered them a conditional proposal.

PM Modi said: “I know that decades of falsehood do put apprehensions in the minds of farmers, I want to say this from the bank of Mother Ganga – we are not working with the intention of deceiving. Our intentions are as holy as the water of river Ganga.”

Farmers are offended by the government’s “One Nation One market” pitch for the farm laws Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce Bill 2020 and the Farmers Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill 2020 passed by the Indian Parliament in September, and believe that they will no more be able to sell their produce freely as before, and the decision has been taken to benefit the corporates.

Modi administration claims that through these reforms farmers who could earlier sell grains and other products only at neighbouring government-regulated wholesale markets can now sell them across the country, including to big food processing companies and retailers such as WalMart. However, there is distrust among farmers, who believe that the government will eventually abolish the wholesale markets, where growers were assured of a minimum support price for staples like wheat and rice, leaving small farmers at the mercy of corporate agri-businesses.

Agreeing with the stance of protestors and encouraging people to support the farmers’ campaign online as well, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the main opposition Congress party, accused Modi of crony capitalism and committing atrocities against farmers.

“Our farmers are standing up against the black laws, they have reached Delhi leaving their farms and families behind. Do you want to stand with them or with Modi’s capitalist friends?” he said in a tweet.