Sheer Obstinacy

 

 

l New Delhi, July 22 (PTI): Amid heavy security, a group of 200 farmers protesting the Centre’s three agri laws started a ‘Kisan Sansad’ at central Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, on Thursday, a few meters from Parliament where the Monsoon Session is underway. Their leaders said, they wanted to show that their agitation was still alive and that they also knew how to run ‘Parliament’.

l New Delhi, July 22 (PTI): Congress Members of Parliament (MPs), led by their leader Rahul Gandhi, staged a protest near Mahatma Gandhi’s statue inside the Parliament Complex and raised slogans against the Government and the Prime Minister.

l New Delhi, July 22 (PTI): Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, on Thursday, urged protesting farmers to end their agitation and come for a dialogue. He said, farmers across the country have favoured the new farm laws.

THE whole nation knows by now that the so-called farmers’ agitation is being continued in sheer obstinacy. The nation also knows that factually, the agitation has lost its steam, and has no moral justification whatsoever to be stretched beyond its logical life. And still, the leaders of the protesters are hell bent upon continuing with the agitation -- only perhaps to save their own face and possibly deface the Government for no reason.

Naturally, the same applies also to the Opposition parties in general and the Congress party in particular. For, from the Opposition camp, the Congress has been the most vocal against the three farm laws -- only as part of its politics -- even though there is no substance in the demand for the repeal of the legislations. This is sheer obstinacy without sense.

Union Minister of Agriculture Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar, therefore, has repeated calmly what the Government has been saying all along -- Come for a dialogue and sort out things.

Let us leave aside these three political developments. Let us consider the reality. Let us really try to understand how this agitation has lost its steam -- since none of the demands has any reason to exist in the first place.

One demand is about keeping intact the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farm produce.

Factually, the new legislations never aimed at scrapping the MSP at all in whatsoever manner. On the ground of reality, the Government has ensured that every grain of farm produce sold in the country got appropriate MSP sent straight into the farmers’ accounts. And this cumulative sum is much bigger than the money the farmers previously got, simply because the new legislations have eliminated the middlemen -- the adatiyas -- who actually dominated the decision about pricing and payment. That unlawful dominance had often deprived the farmers of their legitimate income for decades on end.

All that misrule has been done away with through the new legislation.

And this is exactly the reason why this agitation is being pushed by lobbies of middlemen -- aided and abetted by overseas interests in collusion with a few political elements in the country. There is a reason for the Government to believe that some pro-Khalistan outfits are funding this protest that is now nearly eight months old.

Another demand is about continuance of the traditional mandi (market) system. The new legislation does not even hint at an elimination of the mandi system in any form. All the mandis have continued to exist and the country’s massive production on farm front is being disposed of only through that system even after the new laws came into existence.

This also eliminates a reason for the ongoing protest.

Despite this, the so-called ‘farmers’ continue with their agitation, and even go to the extent of holding what they call ‘Kisan Sansad’ at Jantar Mantar!

But the Government is cool about the whole thing -- displaying monumental patience and maturity. Even though the protest leaders keep declaring that their agitation will continue until the Government repeals the new legislations, the Government does not mind. It even allows the farmers to let the protesters come as close to Parliament Complex as Jantar Mantar and have a nonsensical parallel parliament.

This patience stems from a clear awareness on the part of the Government -- that it is morally and politically right in its approach to handling the challenge. Even when every aspect of the situation favoured the Government, it still kept inviting the protesters for talks to extent of 12 rounds of negotiations. Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar’s repeated invitation to the protesters for talks is part of that cool approach of the Government to the issue. It is worthy of note that the Government has stopped getting bothered by protests by political parties. For, it knows fully well that such protests have no value whatsoever, in law or in electoral politics. For, when protests are so shallow and so stupid, they carry little weight in any form.

But when the Opposition has run out of ideas, all it can keep doing is what it has been doing for the past seven years. It shouts itself hoarse, cries like senile and paid rudalis who beat their chests in cosmetic grief because they have to justify their existence.

There is no other meaning to whatever is happening by way of protest against the three farm laws -- whose provisions already offer answers all the demands in a wonderful manner. That is why the Government is so cool about the whole thing.

Of course, it is keeping a sharp eye on anti-national dimensions of the agitation all right. For, the Government or the nation cannot just forget that on January 26, some so-called farmer-protesters had mounted an attack on Red Fort and tried to unfurl their flag. Nothing of that sort will now be allowed.