BKU Threatens Modi Govt: Address Agrarian Crisis or be Afraid of its Result in 2019

Lucknow/New Delhi: The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) has threatened the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre, that if the ongoing agrarian crisis across the country is not addressed soon his government will have to bear the brunt of it. In an interview with NewsClick in Lucknow, BKU President Naresh Tikait said, “Is haath do aur us haath lo (It is a give and take process). If the farmers’ demands are not met, the government must know ‘ek batan hi to dabana hai (only a press of button on (electronic voting machine) is needed).” The BKU is one of the major farmers’ organisations in North India, with strong presence in Uttar Pradesh. It had massively supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the saffron party had registered a thumping victory and had secured 71 out 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh. Tikait said that they are putting in all efforts to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, but have failed so far. “Both the governments must lend their ears to our demands, otherwise it will cause a problem for them. Though we are not a political organisation, but our base in farming society is quite strong,” he said. He alleged that the state governments are stonewalling farmers’ demands for loan waivers and that is the main reason the country's farmers are protesting everywhere. The firebrand leader further said, that the government's’ unwillingness to increase the minimum support price (MSP) to check food-induced inflation, would impact his voters. However, the UP government on April 12, announced loan waiver for up to Rs 1 lakh, but the farm folks in the state allege, that it has not walked the talk so far. And so, the demands for such relief have only grown in the recent weeks. The write-offs would cost the state a staggering Rs 36,389 crore, and the waiver is far from materialising. The farmers across the country have been protesting, demanding debt relief and better price for their produce. They have been dumping their crop and spilling milk on the streets, to vent their anger against the state and Central government's’ “apathy” to attend to their misery. Suffering crop failure for two years, farmers in Tamil Nadu demanded a Central grant of Rs 40,000 crore in drought relief and waiver of crop loans. They hit headlines in March after they launched a 40-day protest at Jantar Mantar. They shaved their heads, held rats and snakes in their mouths, displayed skulls purportedly of farmers who killed themselves due to debts. The problem in Maharashtra is linked to sharp decrease in prices of onion, tomato, etc, over the past five odd months, due to a glut. The government’s sudden announcement of demonetisation, only made the situation worse. It pushed down the wholesale purchases in the open market. Farmers, therefore, demanded that they must be given support pricing for all agricultural produce and a complete loan waiver. However, the state government is not in a position to accept the demands, as it is already under a debt burden of over Rs 4 lakh crore. Meanwhile, farmers in the grain bowl states of Punjab and Haryana have been seeking higher rates for produce for past several years. In Punjab, there's also a strong demand for waiver of farm debt for some years now, as peasant outfits claimed that financial stress was the biggest reason for farmer suicides.

Farmer bodies here have also demanded MSP for fruits and vegetables, stating that they get very low rates for produce in absence of any state intervention. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to double the farmers’ income by 2022. But the prevailing situation does not at all indicate that he would be able to fulfill this promise.