Farmers unions in India, under the banner of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), have called for a nationwide mobilization to protest the attempt to open the country’s agricultural market for foreign competition without addressing the problems they’ve been facing for years.

The protests will mark the sixth anniversary of the 2020-21 protests, in which thousands of farmers had camped on the borders of the capital, New Delhi, for months, forcing the government to withdraw farm laws and promise to address other agricultural issues.

Read more: Indian farmers celebrate victory march back home as their historic struggle ends after a year

The SKM was born as a united front of farmers unions, representing millions, during the struggle against the three farm laws.

In a press release issued on Monday, November 9, SKM claimed that the Modi government has not fulfilled a single promise it made while signing the agreement with the farmers six years ago, which led to the suspension of the movement.

“In 2020, farmers numbering in the hundreds of thousands fought the pro-corporate three farm laws. In the signed agreement of December 9, 2021, farmers were given hope that the government will solve” their problems. However, they have been betrayed, SKM said in the press release.

Their main demands include enacting a law for the minimum support price (MSP) for all farm products on the basis of the total cost of production + 50% profit formula, scrap all the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed with the European Union, the UK, and New Zealand along with the proposed FTA with the US, and the restoration of the rural employment guarantee law withdrawn recently.

The Modi government’s FTAs with Europe and the US will open India’s agricultural markets to highly subsidized agricultural goods which will ultimately harm the livelihoods of millions in India dependent on farming. These farmers are already struggling to continue farming due to rising input prices and the lack of enough return, SKM and other farmers’ unions had said earlier.

The November 26 agitation will include the demands of the workers’ unions in the country to scrap four new labor codes introduced earlier this year by the Modi government. The laws are widely seen as an attack on the workers’ basic rights, such as eight hours of work and collective bargaining.

Defending democracy

The farmers are also supporting the ongoing national agitation against the alleged electoral malpractices in the country. The SKM has also demanded the removal of the country’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, who is accused of manipulating elections to help the ruling far-right BJP win.

SKM’s press release called for the cancellation of the so-called Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and re-inclusion of all the 130 million plus voters removed from the country’s electoral lists through it so far.

According to the opposition, most of the voters removed from the electoral lists through the SIR have conventionally voted against the ruling ultra-right-wing and Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They allege that the mass removal of voters was part of the deliberate attempt of the CEC to tilt elections in favor of the BJP.

Youth and students groups, along with the opposition parties, have faced massive state crackdown for launching a nationwide movement in October demanding the scrapping of the SIR and sacking Gyanesh Kumar.

Farmer’s unions will organize protests at various locations across the country before coming to the capital, Delhi, on November 26 and march to the Parliament while also challenging the Modi government’s attempts to curb popular protests.

The November 26 march is set to culminate at the Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, which has been recently denotified by the government as a protest site making it a criminal offense to organize a protest there.

From BT News via This RSS Feed.