‘We’ll prevail or die’: Farm talks fail again
NEW DELHI: The eighth round of talks between the Union government and farmers failed to end the deadlock on Friday, with the Centre saying it would not scrap three contentious agriculture laws and asking farmer unions to wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue. The farm leaders, however, stuck to the stand that the laws must be repealed and raised placards saying they will “prevail or die”.
There were also some sharp exchanges and tense arguments between both sides, according to Hannan Mollah, the leader of the All India Kisan Sabha. Both sides, however, agreed to meet again on January 15, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said.
“The government and the unions discussed the three laws but no decision could be taken. The government kept appealing for alternatives to a repeal. The farmers did not agree, so the discussions ended there,” Tomar said.
During Friday’s discussions, which lasted two-and-a-half
hours, the farmers also raised the issue of some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders from Punjab allegedly running down protesting farm leaders and branding them “Khalistanis”, a reference to the Sikh separatist movement, according to Balbir Singh Rajewal, a prominent farm leader present at the meeting. In what has been a tough political challenge for the Modi government, tens of thousands of protesting farmers have encircled the Capital for 45 days, demanding the government scrap the three laws approved by Parliament in September.
Before the next round of talks, the Supreme Court on January 11 is set to take up a bunch of petitions challenging the validity of the laws on the ground that the federal government doesn’t have the powers to bring legislation on the agriculture sector because it fell in the domain of states. The farm leaders, who are not part of the petitions, have said that even if the laws were declared constitutionally valid, they would continue to demand a repeal because they laws were “anti-farmer”.
The three Union ministers — Tomar, Piyush Goyal and Som Parkash -- who represented the Centre, met Union home minister Amit Shah before heading into the talks on Friday. Matters could soon come to a head because the farmers have said that if the issue remains unresolved they will take out a tricolour march on tractors on Republic Day at Delhi’s Rajpath, where India’s annual military parade and cultural programme is held every January 26. “You can say there is a breakdown in talks,” said Kavitha Kuruganti, another farm leader present at the talks. “The government has said it cannot and will not repeal the laws.”
“It is indeed a very sad day for Indian democracy that in the middle of talks, an elected government which has been constantly cheating the farmers suddenly saying ‘let’s get this resolved through the Supreme Court. Even if the court looks at that issue (validity of the laws), and says yes or no on that, the issue remains that what the farmers are raising is not just the constitutional validity, but the very implications of this kind of a policy direction,” Kuruganti added. Experts said that it appeared the government is banking on a positive verdict in the laws from the Supreme Court. “The government feels if the laws are upheld, it will be a shot in its arm and at least the question of constitutional validity of the laws will be settled,” said Paresh Saha, a political analyst with Hyderabad’s Osmania University. Opening the negotiations on Friday, Tomar said the three federal laws applied to the whole of the country and many farmer organisations supported the laws. But Rajewal, who opened the negotiations from the farmers’ side, said the farmers won’t give up their agitation unless the laws were repealed.
“It seems you (the government) do not want to resolve the issue as talks have been happening for so many days. In that case, please give us a clear answer and we will go. Why to waste everyone’s time,” Rajewal can be heard saying during the talks in a video released by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, a platform of the farm unions.
The seventh round of talks held on January 4 had ended in a stalemate too. Then, too, the farmers pressed the government to repeal the three agricultural laws approved by Parliament in September but the government declined to commit to a rollback.
In the previous round of talks, held on December 30, the government agreed to two demands of the farmers. One, the government had agreed not to pay direct cash to farmers instead of power subsidy for agricultural use, which the farmers argue would increase power costs for them.