A large number of farmers from Punjab and Haryana were detained near Zirakpur on the Chandigarh-Punjab border on Monday while they were trying to enter the joint Capital of the two States to hold a protest seeking more rights for agriculturists.
The protesting farmers, led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kisan Morcha national president Om Prakash Dhankar, were detained when they tried to enter the city to submit a memorandum to the Punjab Governor. Prohibitory orders had earlier been imposed in the city in the wake of the farmers protest.
The 16 rights of farmers mentioned in the national charter of demands include right in profit of crops, purchase and bonus rights, security rights in times of danger, right to cheap resource-availability, access to farmer-friendly economic organizations and banks, rights to subsidized inputs, and right to maximum loan-limit.
It also includes right to land ownership, right for irrigation of every field, right to seeds, right to the availability of fertilizer and pesticides, right to ownership of agriculture implements, right to uninterrupted power supply for irrigating fields, right to animal feed, right to pension in old age and right to treatment in event of falling ill.
Dhankar demanded implementation of pro-farmers policies that lie buried in government files and assured source of monthly income to farmers.
"Implementation of pro-farmer policies, assured source of monthly income to farmers, promoting and implementing recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers report were some of the main demands," Dhankar said.
Interacting with media after the arrest of BJP leaders, Kisan Morcha national spokesman Vineet Joshi said that surrendering before the worst economic crisis, farmers are asking for permission to sell their organs to sustain the expenses of their families.
"Except urea, all other inputs in farming are in the control of multinational companies in the market. In the last 15 years, 2.5 lakh farmers have been forced to commit suicide as the paddy and wheat no more remain income-earning crops," Joshi said.
He said, "land has become the most valuable asset in country. Industrial houses and MNCs are busy creating banks of land, whereas the original owners of land —the farmers — are left bereft of its ownership rights".
He added that relief packages for farmers were hardly making things easier for farmers.
He added that farming had not seen any infrastructure development in the past many years, leading to rotting food grain.