62 farmers organisations will organise protests on Yoga Day, including the performance of shavasana, to highlight agrarian distress
60 farm bodies to do ‘Shavasana’ to highlight agrarian distress
Amid raging farmer protests in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, a conglomeration of 62 farmer organisations have decided to perform the yogic posture of ‘Shavasana’ on the International Yoga Day on June 21 to drive home the point of agrarian distress in the country.
As part of the plans, hoardings with slogans of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ would be put up with photographs of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri along with the photograph of a farmer handing himself. And one farmer would be performing the ‘Shavasana’ besides this poster. ‘Shavasana’ is a pose usually done at the end of a yoga practice in which practitioners lay flat on their backs with the heels spread as wide as the yoga mat and the arms at the sides of the body, palms facing upward.
Sources in the farm organisations said the symbolic protest would be held across the country.
The 62 farmers organisations, which includes the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, are also planning to block highways on June 16. These decisions were taken at a meeting held on June 10.
Another major protest is being planned at Rajghat in the capital on June 14 by ‘Ekta Parishad’-led organisations, which will also be attended by Narmada Bachao activist Medha Patkar as well as Yogendra Yadav.
Ms Patkar and Mr Yadav have already visited Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, where six farmers were killed in police farming.
The Congress has asked the BJP government to fulfil its promise of providing Minimum Support Price plus 50 per cent cost of production as promised in its manifesto for the 2014 general elections.