Farmers threaten to eat bones at Jantar Mantar

ON SUNDAY, A MAN DRESSED AS PRIME MINISTER ‘BEAT FARMERS WITH A LATHI’, SIMILAR TO HOW THEY HAD BEEN WHIPPED BY ‘MODI’ IN APRIL

NEW DELHI: After a lukewarm response from the authorities and the media to their protests, a group of farmers from Tamil Nadu who returned to Delhi 44 days ago are going back to some tried and tested methods to get some attention. On Sunday, a man dressed as Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘beat the farmers with a lathi’, similar to how they had been whipped by ‘Modi’ in April. The farmers have threatened to crush and eat bones and skulls on Monday, which allegedly belong to their brethren who committed suicide in the face of debilitating debt and crippling droughts.

A group of farmers from Tamil Nadu had reached Jantar Mantar in March and had grabbed headlines for their never been heard before protest strategies — from wearing skulls of farmers who allegedly committed suicide, eating mice, getting flogged by a man wearing a Modi mask, drinking urine to even stripping at Raisina Hill.

After 41 days, the farmers called off the protest in April, based on the reassurances given by Tamil Nadu chief minister K Palaniswami and minister of state for road transport and highways Pon Radhakrishnan.

But after the politicians allegedly failed to keep their word, the farmers returned with skulls and bones of other farmers in July, demanding loan waiver, fair prices for their produce, a revised drought relief package and constitution of a Cauvery river management board, among other things.

This time, the farmers have tried chaining their hands and legs, getting a woman whose husband allegedly committed suicide to run a plough with her sons tied to it, hitting themselves with slippers, begging outside the American Embassy, holding hawan and eating raw pork.