The high-powered committee constituted by the Supreme Court to hold negotiations with the farmers protesting at the Shambhu border between Punjab and Haryana on Friday cancelled a meeting with union leaders in Panchkula on Friday after the Punjab unit of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) decided not to attend it. “We had only called farmers leaders of SKM. They refused to be a part of the meeting. Hence we had to postpone it. It has been deferred till we decide on the further date,” a source privy to the developments said. Earlier, Balbir Singh Rajewal, president of Bhartiya Kisan Union (Rajewal), and Prem Singh Bhangu, president of All India Kisan Federation (AIKF), had said in a joint statement that the mandate given to the committee formed on September 2 last year was to reach out to protesting farmers at the Shambhu border. They said that since the SKM was not part of the agitation at the Shambhu border, they would not attend the meeting. The panel has already met leaders of the SKM (non-political). However, only the second-rung leadership had attended the meeting. The committee was constituted on September 2 under former Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Nawab Singh to resolve grievances of farmers agitating at the Shambhu border. It comprises retired IPS officer BS Sandhu, agriculture expert Devinder Sharma, economist Professor Ranjit Singh Ghuman and Punjab State Farmers’ and Farm Workers’ Commission chairman Sukhpal Singh. What the committee said in its interim report In its interim report submitted to the Supreme Court on November 22, the panel listed reasons behind agrarian distress, including stagnant yield, rising costs and debt and inadequate marketing system. The committee suggested solutions, including examining the possibility of giving legal sanctity to minimum support price (MSP) and offering direct income support. In its 11-page interim report, the panel had stated, “The farming community in the country in general and that of Punjab and Haryana, in particular, has been facing an ever-increasing crisis for over two decades. The stagnation in yield and production growth since the mid-1990s marked the beginning of the crisis.” It added, “In 2022-23, the institutional debt on farmers in Punjab was Rs 73,673 crore, while in Haryana it was Rs 76,630 crore as per the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). There is also a significant burden of non-institutional debt on farmers, which is estimated to be 21.3 per cent of total outstanding debt on farmers in Punjab and 32 per cent in Haryana, according to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).” The report had stated that the farming community across the country was also struggling with a suicide epidemic. “In India, over 4 lakh farmers and farm workers have committed suicides since 1995. In Punjab, a house-to-house survey conducted by three public sector universities recorded 16,606 suicides among farmers and farm workers in 15 years (2000 to 2015),” it said.
