Author and journalist P Sainath (Express File Photo)Making minimum support price (MSP), as decided by the Swaminathan commission report, legal with guaranteed procurement of crops can make farming profitable, said noted author and journalist P Sainath here Monday.
“Farming has to be made a profitable venture in the hands of farmers, not in the hands of corporations. Farming is a livelihood and it should be seen as providing livelihood for the family country,” said Sainath, who was here to attend Mela Ghadari Babeyan Da, which is organised every year on November 1 in the memory of freedom fighters of Ghadar movement at Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall, Jalandhar.
He said that the ongoing farmers’ protests have impacted the politics of the country and now no elections can be fought without having a farming crisis as an issue. “It is an issue in every election now,” he said, adding that the farmers’ protest is one of the longest peaceful and democratic protests in the world.
He said that 16 years have passed ever since the Swaminathan committee report was presented to the government but it has never discussed it in Parliament. The government is forming a committee on the farmers’ issue. Ironically, there is no farmer in that committee while Swaminathan commission was a commission of experts on farming. To deal with the farmers’ issues, there should be ‘kisan commission’ and it should be controlled by farmers and farm labourers. As such, commission will boost the moral of the farmers too.
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Sainath said that farmers’ suicides are going up but the government has changed the counting methods. After 2015, it is not possible to compare suicide data with the previous year’s figures because they changed the methods totally.
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First published on: 02-11-2021 at 10:18:51 am
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