‘No talks if no-repeal is govt’s only stance’
GHAZIPUR: Farm leaders Rakesh Tikait and Balbir Singh Rajewal, at the forefront of the months-long farmers’ agitation at Delhi’s borders, said on Friday that talks with the central government will not resume until the Centre changes its stand on repealing the three contentious agriculture laws.
“We will not talk with conditions. What the government offered after 11 rounds of talks has fallen flat. Now if they offer a new proposal, we will consider starting fresh talks,” said Tikait, in an interview to HT.
The government has maintained that repealing the laws is not an option.
When asked about the government’s proposal to suspend the laws, which were enacted in September last year, for 18 months, Tikait said: “If we take this [proposal] and enter into talks, that will mean our acceptance of their formula. If they [government] want to go beyond this, the doors to talks can open.”
Rajewal, on a question about the nationwide chakka jam on Saturday, asserted that the agitation will remain peaceful. “Our agitation was peaceful, is peaceful, and will remain so in future. It will be 100% peaceful tomorrow (Saturday). We have full control over our farmers.”
Aday ahead of the farm unions’ chakka jam, farmer leaders Rakesh Tikait and Balbir Singh Rajewal spoke to Ramesh Vinayak at the Ghazipur border about the protests, the negotiations, the January 26 tractor march, the chances of resuming talks with the government, and the way forward. Tikait, 52, a former cop-turned-farmer leader, and Rajewal, 73, a veteran Bharatiya Kisan Union leader from Punjab, have emerged as the pre-eminent faces of the protest that has laid siege to Delhi’s key entry points and garnered international attention. Edited excerpts: PM Narendra Modi underlined his intent to resolve the farmers’ agitation by committing at the January 30 allparty meeting that the proposal to suspend the three farm laws and set up a committee still stands. What is your response?
Tikait: This is not acceptable to us. We will not talk with conditions. What the government offered after 11 rounds of talks has fallen flat. Now if they offer a new proposal, we will consider starting fresh talks.
What should the Centre do to bring the farmer unions back to negotiating table?
Tikait: They should give up their insistence that there will be no repeal of the three laws...then, we will also vouch for talks.
Farmers have taken a repeal-or-nothing stand. How will such an extreme position help create the negotiating space?
Tikait: Obstinacy is on the part of the government. It is against the repeal of the laws and legal back-up for minimum support price (MSP). For us, these are the big issues.
Rajewal: The government should fulfil its duty and invite us (farm unions). The government is not expected to sit silent and do nothing. They have become stubborn on this point.
Tikait: It’s possible that we may go to the first meeting to just put across our views and then come back to discuss it with our committee. But that would open the door for talks.
So, you want the Centre to send an invite?
Tikait: Let there be an invitation. Then, things will move forward. Talks are stalled since January 11. Farmers are in jail, many are missing, and over 400 tractors have been damaged. The government has put multilayered barricades and spikes on roads leading to Delhi. People are inconvenienced. Sooner they (the Centre) respond the better. Otherwise, we will hold meetings across the nation. We will launch the second phase of the agitation from Saturday, and it will go on till October 2. The government says the farmers’ movement is
based on misinformation that land will be snatched, and corporates will take over agriculture and the MSP will be discontinued.
Rajewal: The government is creating such misgivings. In the meetings so far, farms laws were discussed clause by clause. We proved that these are wrong.
How have the January 26 events changed the movement?
Tikait: Three lakh tractors and 20 lakh people came to Delhi. Such a massive crowd could have done anything. But our agitation was peaceful except the wrong acts of certain elements, who infiltrated our stir and did all in complicity with the authorities to defame and discredit our movement.
The PM said the country was saddened by insult to the national flag at Red Fort.
Rajewal: Will the PM tell us why Red Fort, which is the country’s pride, has been leased to private players? The national flag atop the ramparts was not touched. We even took out sadbhavna (harmony) marches with the national flag. No one knows and upholds the honour of the Tricolour better than a farmer whose son is a jawan serving on the country’s borders. Before coming to power, the BJP never unfurled the national flag at its offices. The RSS never hoisted the national flag at its headquarters in Nagpur. How can they teach us the pride of the national flag?
The government says the stir is getting support from forces that aim to weaken the country.
Tikait: Who are these forces? Tell us their names. We will deal with such forces. If someone is trying to weaken the country, we will sort them out. We have not seen the tent of any such forces at our protest sites. All you see here are farmers from villages who bring their own food material and run community kitchens.
But is it not a fact that a section of protesters went out of your control?
Tikait: What happened on December 6, 1992, in Ayodhya? All top BJP leaders were there, and the party was in power. Was the
Babri mosque structure demolished intentionally? Their affidavits said it was done by a crowd that turned unruly.
Many believe that the Centre’s proposal to stay the implementation of the laws for 18 months and set up a panel with the involvement of farm groups is a reasonable offer; it amounts, for all practical purposes, to the government retreating because this version of the law will be pulled back; it buys enough time to come up with a new framework. Why don’t you accept the offer?
Rajewal: These laws are basically wrong and were rammed through Parliament in a highhanded manner. These have been enacted for trading, not agriculture. A farmer doesn’t trade; he takes his crop for marketing. These laws are not meant for farmers. Secondly, in the Constitution’s Seventh Schedule, agriculture is a state subject, but they have taken the concurrent list route in which Schedule 33 is on food stuff. Farmers produce foodgrains, not food stuff. So, these laws cheat farmers. Nor do they pass the constitutional test.
The government says the farmers’ view on the laws and the MSP are based on fear and not on facts.
Tikait: Even today, farmers from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan sell foodgrains in Punjab and Haryana, which are the only states with MSP. Once there is a lawbacked MSP, traders in the entire country will not dare to buy crop at lower than the MSP.
Rajewal: Except Punjab and Haryana, the government has not put in place a marketing system in other states. We want a similar marketing system all over by opening 48,000 mandis so that all farmers benefit from the MSP.
But there is wide consensus that the country urgently needs agri reforms...
Rajewal: Of course, we need reforms. But we don’t want corporate agriculture. Reforms should not solely benefit traders...
Tikait: In the reforms that this government is pushing, traders are trying to invade agriculture.
The government has said MSP will continue.
Rajewal: On MSP, the government says the existing system will continue. But that doesn’t apply to farmers except in Punjab and Haryana. We want a uniform legally guaranteed MSP for all states.
Is there a trust deficit between farmers and the government?
Tikait: We have full trust in the government, but it is hell bent on deception. Look at how they have levelled allegations against our movement... Farmers are being labelled Khalistanis. They say we are getting funds from abroad. Attempts are on to divide us and entangle us on the lines of big versus small farmers and Punjab versus Haryana. This agitation will not break up. The government will have come to the table and talk. Would you talk to the Sc-appointed expert panel?
Tikait: We have already rejected that...
Protests are confined to Punjab, Haryana and western UP.
Tikait: The protests are happening in Gujarat, too. More than 100 farmers there have been detained and their families don’t know their whereabouts.
Rajewal: The protest sites around Delhi have farmers from Karnataka, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. It is a pan-india agitation.
Would you give an assurance that during the chakka jam on February 6, there will be no violence?
Rajewal: Our agitation was peaceful, is peaceful, and will remain so in future. It will be 100% peaceful tomorrow (on Saturday). We have full control over our farmers.
What will be the political fallout of the agitation?
Tikait: We are not doing anything for votes or politics. Anyone who wants to exploit it politically can do it on his own.
Rajewal: Voters will now get educated and understand how to deal with politicians.
What’s your relationship with the BJP now?
Tikait: I have relations with all parties. We go by the government’s policies. If they are against farmers, we will oppose that to any extent no matter which party is in power.
What is your next course of action?
Tikait: The next target is to involve 40 lakh tractors. From Saturday, farmers will bring soil and water from their villages... While the government is putting spikes around the protest sites, we will sow flowers. That will connect our agitation with rural India.the tractor will be the symbol of our agitation; and ‘goan ki mitti aur paani’ (soil and water from the villages) will be its devta (presiding deity).