Madhya Pradesh Farmer’s Protest – Village Bandh
In a shocking state of events, Madhya Pradesh farmers have announced a 10-day long bandh.The repercussions of this non-violent Gaon Bandh include a ban on the supply of Milk, Vegetables and other Commodities from Villages to the Cities. Started in Madhya Pradesh, the protest is having its after-effects on neighboring states too with the supply of milk, fruits, vegetables etc to be affected. Now the protest’s immediate effects are evident in Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Chattisgarh other than Madhya Pradesh. While the farmers have decided to keep the entire protest non-violent following all the orders in the state, there are districts in Punjabi like Patiala, Faridkot among others, where farmers are spilling milk and throwing vegetables on the roads.
In between this action that the farmers have taken, what is missing from the limelight is the unfulfillment of the demands that have led to such an agitation. These demands include implementation of Swaminathan Commission Report, Compensation for damaged crops, good Minimum Support Price from the government and one-time loan waiver, removal of middle-men and getting a better price for their produce.
Speaking to AKE News, Gurinder Singh Rance of Food Processing Technologies shared his take on the deteriorating plight of the farmers, “Agriculture led to the rise of civilization of humans. Through the centuries, agriculture has been the most important constituent of a nation’s economy. What do we really do of the statistics that name India to be among the largest producers of milk, rice, wheat, pulses and is one of the largest markets of agriculture today? It may momentarily, come as a matter of pride but what good does it do to the condition of the farmers whose sweat and labour is not adequately compensated and their input costs are getting higher and the returns getting lesser thereby pushing them deeper into debt and possibly suicides”.
The nation must stop to think about it’s farmers, because of whom we have food on our plate every day. If not adequately sorted out, the agitation will keep growing and in desperation the tillers may stop tilling and the next generation will slowly migrate to the cities. We have not industrialised so much as to abandon our agricultural industry. Thus, with not enough jobs, there will be further stress on the infrastructure of the already bursting cities and even have law and order situations.
We owe it to them and to ourselves to provide a long term solution to this unfair system that has been meted out to them since a long long time now.
Well, this is not the first time that something like this has happened across the nation. In 2017, too, a farmer protest like this happened in different parts of the country like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. That time too, the agitation negatively affected the supply of products to the cities.