Over a month farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are continuing to block key highways on the outskirts of New Delhi as they demand a total repeal of the farming Bill which seeks to deregulate crop pricing.
The farmers worry that the three laws, designed to deregulate the agricultural sector, do not include a Minimum Support Price (MSP), a minimum price guaranteed by the government at which farmers can sell their crops. Without this safety net, farmers fear they will have to participate in contract farming with private corporations, where these companies determine what the farmer grows and the price they sell at.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi argues that these laws will modernise the agricultural sector, farmers will have more autonomy, as they can set their own price’s and sell directly to private businesses, farmers insist that without a guarantee of an MSP, opening the market to contract farming and mass privatisation will pave the way for exploitation.
Who feeds the farmers as they protest?
“In the beginning nothing had been decided about the food, so we brought our own: atta, dal, ghee,” says Bikramjeet, a 25-year-old farmer from Tarn Taran in Punjab. “Then we got so much support from the people of Delhi, from the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, from the AAP, the neighbouring villages in Haryana. Thoda-thoda bhi aa raha hai; jada-jada bhi aa raha hai (things are coming in a little at a time and a lot at a time). We are very thankful to everybody,” he says, readying to camp on the Singhu border (with Haryana) for a year if necessary, and to live this life.
A group of five friends from Amritsar, who wished to organize a langar but didn’t have much time to prepare food. So, they decided to buy regular-sized pizzas from a Haryana mall and set up a stall at the Singhu Border. If we go by the report, around 400 pizzas were distributed within minutes as a huge crowd, including the protesting peasants and residents from nearby areas, queued up.
As soon as the videos of this unique langar surfaced on social media, called ‘Pizza Langar’ it made headlines and garnered compliments from across the country.
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https://www.factualblogs.com/2020/12/the-prowess-of-indian-farmers.html
