Anand P Upadhyay

ANN | Barnala. 30 April 2018

Speaking at the lecture at Tarksheel Bhawan today, veteran Agri Journalist P Sainath cautioned farmers against corporate designs and urged them to do away with corporate control on agriculture.

 He said “Successive governments might be political adversaries but have adopted a similar approach in pursuing economic policies and benefitting corporates at the cost of farmers. It is time that farmers from across the country follow the path shown by 50,000 farmers of Maharashtra who took out a 180-kilometre march from Nashik to Mumbai. Now, farmers need to join hands and encircle Parliament, making lawmakers frame policies that benefit farmers.”

 “A war-like situation is developing on the agrarian front with successive governments working for profitability of multinational companies (MNCs) rather than farmer welfare. The agrarian crisis would soon turn into a social crisis”, he warned.

 He is on a 15-day visit to Punjab to study the agrarian crisis.

 Sainath also called for declaring agriculture a public service with a guarantee of minimum wages and also demanded a 20-day special session to discuss agrarian crisis and a 3-days to discuss on national draft farm policy and credit structure farmers and agriculture.

 He also emphasized government should debate on Swaminathan Committee report, which has been overdue for years and consider all its aspects, including family labour and rent of land while calculating input costs.

 Sainath also warned people on water scarcity.