Rally here to protest India’s new ‘anti-farming’ laws
Members of the local Sikh community are staging a rally Saturday in Penticton to protest what they say are new anti-farmer laws in the Punjab region of India they fear will destroy the traditional way of life there.
And because farming is a way of life for many Sikhs in the Okanagan with ties to Punjab, they’re rallying here to send support overseas.
“Punjab farmers have been farming for many, many generations. Their attachment to their land is nothing less than a child's attachment to its mother,” the group said in a press release.
“This overtake of land by corporations is going to leave hundreds and thousands of farmers and labourers unemployed. Farmers and farm labourers would have to migrate to big cities in search of employment. This drastic shift in farming is going to have an irreversible impact on their culture, music, language and way of life.”
The group organizing Penticton’s rally fears the new rules will eventually force small farmers to sell their land to large corporations.
The legislation is aimed at reforming India's deeply stressed farming sector and will give farmers freedom to market their produce. The bills are also aimed at removing middlemen from the farm trade and making farming market-oriented, the government has said.
Critics say the bills create an undemocratic mechanism by which bureaucrats become arbitrators to settle any contract disputes between farmers and buyers, rather than civil courts. They also say that in the absence of better infrastructure like climate-controlled storage facilities, proper roads and reliable irrigation and power supply, removing middlemen will not be helpful to the farming sector.
Farmers have long been seen as the heart and soul of India, where agriculture supports more than half of the country's 1.4 billion people. But they've also seen their economic clout diminish over the last three decades. Once accounting for a third of India's gross domestic product, farmers now account for only 15% of the country's
Saturday’s rally will start at the Sikh Temple at 3290 South Main Street at 1 p.m. with a convoy of vehicles heading north on Main Street to Okanagan Lake, then back south along Channel Parkway to Skaha Park, where speeches will follow until 3 p.m.
The public is invited to join any part of the rally.