New Delhi, Feb 20 (EFE).- Indian farmers will resume their march to New Delhi on Wednesday after union leaders rejected the government’s proposal on minimum support price for certain agricultural products.
“We will march towards Delhi on Feb 21 at 11 am,” one of the farmers’ union leaders, Sarwan Singh Pandher, said in a press conference late Monday.
The protest was temporarily suspended on Thursday to facilitate negotiations between the authorities and the farmers.
On Sunday, the government proposed to buy five products, including three pulses, maize, and cotton, from the farmers at a minimum support price (MSP), a government policy created to protect the price of crops in the face of market fluctuations, for the next five years.
However, the farmers have rejected the proposal as it does not fulfil their main demand for a legal guarantee of procurement of 23 crops at MSP.
“If you analyse, there is nothing in the government’s proposal (…) this is not in the favour of farmers. We reject it,” another farmer leader, Jagjit Singh Dallewal, told media.
The other demands include pensions for farmers, debt waivers, and withdrawal of police cases filed against farmers during the 2021 protests.
Last week, thousands of farmers on hundreds of tractors began a massive march towards New Delhi from the neighboring states of Haryana and Punjab, the latter being known as the ‘breadbasket of India,’ to press home their demands.
The implementation of MSP was one of the main demands during protests between 2020 and 2021, when thousands of farmers camped for almost 15 months outside Delhi, opposing an agrarian reform initiated by the Indian government.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to bow to pressure and repeal a newly enacted law, which farmers said gave too much power to big companies by deregulating the market.
Two years on, farmers’ associations say the government has not met all their demands. EFE
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