The fight over the 3 farm bills between farmers and the Central Government is not reaching any conclusion and is becoming more furious and violent by the day. A few days back when the farmers concluded their agitation on the railway tracks, it felt like we may finally see the end of this long haul, but the illusion faded away very quickly when farmers of Punjab and Haryana gave the call of “Chalo Delhi”, which meant march towards Delhi and discuss their demands with the Union Government.
Both sides in this issue are firmly standing on their ground and are not willing to budge, on one hand, the farmers are saying that they are not against the reforms but the issue of MSP introduction in commercial contracts is not addressed by the government. On the other hand, the government maintains its stand saying that these protests are politically motivated and are done by reform averse people. One can choose whichever side they want in this democracy, so we will not talk about the merit of the arguments. No one can deny that the situation is deteriorating by the day and both sides are just being adamant with their views, which is creating a stalemate situation. What we need right now is an active outreach from the government to hold a significant dialogue with farmers with the involvement of the political establishment and not the government officers.
On the other hand, the farmers’ organization needs to take care of the fact that the pandemic is not over yet, and risking their life by creating chaos in Delhi will be something which should be revisited by the farmer leaders. There are few times when the BJP state leaders complained to the central leaders about the situation but the high command chose to remain silent on this, which now we can see is slowly and gradually snowballing into something big.
It can be very safely said here that the entire issue around the reforms was manageable but was let snowballed into big movement by the inaction of the high command of the incumbent and impatience of the farmers’ organization. We still have hope as the farmers who are not associated with any farmer’s organization have not joined the protest yet, but it just a matter of time and one should not wait for that to happen. This country has anyway suffered a lot this year because of the Wuhan Virus, the last thing we need is another man-made crisis occurred due to ego fights between different sections in the Indian power corridors and mismanagement by the union government.
