“Government to Repeal Three Contentious Farm Laws:” Modi, “Agitation to Continue Till Implemented:” Tikait

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Nov 19: Bowing to the pressures from the farmers, the prime minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced the government’s willingness to repeal all the three contentious farm laws for which the farmers across the country had been agitating form the last one year.

Modi while announcing that the necessary legislation for the withdrawal of the three acts would be adopted in the coming winter session of Parliament starting from November 29, appealed to the farmers sitting on dharna around the borders of Delhi to return home.

However, even as the agitating farmers launched celebrations over the success of their agitation, the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait said the on-going agitation would not be withdrawn and all scheduled agitational programmes of the Samyaukt Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body of all the farmers’ unions participating in the agitation, would continue till the necessary legislation was passed in Parliament.

Tikait also stressed that the government should talk to farmers over the issue of minimum support price (MSP) of crops and other issues which were also parts of the farmers’ agitation along with the repeal of the farm laws.

The BKU national spokesperson said this on Twitter soon after Modi announced the government’s decision to repeal the three contentious farm laws which were at the centre of the farmers’ protest since November 26 last year.

“The protest will not be withdrawn immediately, we will wait for the day when the farm laws are repealed in Parliament. Along with MSP, the government should talk to farmers on other issues too,” Tikait tweeted in Hindi.

Alarmed by the reverses the BJP suffered in the recent by-elections to various Assembly seats, the announcement by Modi was made just ahead of the elections early next year to Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab state Assemblies which are likely to face direct impact of the farmers’ agitation. The move comes on the festival of Guru Purab when Sikhism founder Guru Nanak’s birthday is celebrated, mainly in Punjab.

Modi said the intentions of the government while enacting the three farm laws were to help the farmers better and improve their income but apparently the government and the ruling party “failed to convince” a section of the farmers for which it had decided to repeal the three acts an start afresh to try solve the problems the farmers faced.

“While apologising to the nation, I want to say with a sincere and pure heart that maybe something was lacking in our tapasya (dedication) that we could not explain the truth, as clear as the light of the diya, to some of our farmer brothers. But today is Prakash Parv, not the time to blame anyone. Today, I want to tell the country that we have decided to repeal the three farm laws,” Modi said in an address to the nation.

“In the Parliament session starting the end of this month, we will complete the process of repealing the three laws,” he said. “I would request all my protesting farmer friends, today is the auspicious day of Guru Purab, return home to your fields and your families and make a new beginning, let us move forward afresh. We regret we could not convince all farmers. Only a section of them was opposing the laws, but we kept trying to educate and inform them,” Modi said.

Before the big climb-down, the Prime Minister defended the laws saying they were meant as reforms, mainly for small and marginal farmers in the country. “Whatever I did was for farmers. What I am doing is for the country.”

Thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have been camping outside Delhi since November 26, 2020, demanding that the “black laws” be withdrawn. The BJP has faced massive anger in northern states, something it cannot afford as it preps for big elections ahead, including the 2024 national polls.  The farmer protests did not stop through several rounds of talks between the government and farmers, disruptions in parliament and Supreme Court hearings on petitions challenging the laws.

Even as the BJP hailed the prime minister’s announcement as a “very strong pro-farmer” step which “showed that the BJP is always with the farmers,” the opposition parties seeing it as a major setback for their prospects in the coming elections in the northern states and will have to recalibrate their next moves for the time being called it “the farmers’ victory over the government’s arrogance.”

“Farmers’ satyagraha has defeated arrogance. Congratulations for this victory over injustice,” Congress former president Rahul Gandhi tweeted. The Samajwadi Party leader and former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav claimed that the announcement would not help the BJP as the farmers had “made up their mind” against the ruling party for the harassment and hardships they had to suffer for the last one year or more when the BJP governments at centre and in the state UP refused to even show sympathy towards their problems.

The opposition and farmers accuse the government of railroading the three laws through parliament without much discussion. The government said the laws would remove middlemen and improve farmers’ earnings by allowing them to sell anywhere in the country. Farmers argued that the laws would expose them to unfair competition, leave them at the mercy of corporates and deprive them of the guaranteed price for their produce.

The sensational rollback is politically expedient for the BJP as it seeks re-election in Uttar Pradesh, a big decider ahead of 2024. The BJP feared that it would lose voters in western Uttar Pradesh, one of the epicentres of the farmer protests, a region that has a fourth of the assembly seats set to vote. The frequency of visits to UP by the Prime Minister and other leaders like the union home minister Amit Shah reflect the party’s laser focus on retaining UP. Right after his address, PM Modi headed to Uttar Pradesh again to launch a series of schemes.

The PM’s move may tip the balance in Punjab, where the BJP has been reduced to a minor player after long-time ally Akali Dal broke ties over the farm laws. The state’s ruling Congress faces a challenge from its own former leader, Amarinder Singh, who was forced to quit as Chief Minister in September, held talks with the BJP soon after. Cancelling the farm laws was reportedly a condition that Singh had for a tie-up with the BJP. Even the Akali Dal, which had quit the NDA on the passage of the three farm laws, is likely to rejoin hands with the BJP.

Tikait in his tweets said while the farmers would wait till the promised repeal was actually carried out on the floor of the House, stressed that the government should talk to farmers over giving legislative protection to the farmers on the minimum support price (MSP) of crops and other matters.