Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Thrusday urged the Centre to rope in eminent agricultural experts and economists to suggest ways and means to arrest the trend of constantly dwindling profits from agriculture income due to unfriendly farmer policies.
Badal was responding to a media query on Punjab being the second State after Maharashtra in farm suicides as informed by the Union Agriculture Minister, on the sidelines of the swearing-in-ceremony of the newly inducted Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPSs).
“The State Government has been making all out efforts to ensure welfare of its farmers by giving them free power and other incentives from its meagre resources to make farming profession at least self-sustainable but he lamented that the rights of the farmers, who are passing through severe agrarian crisis, must be safeguarded with prompt intervention of Central Government without any further delay,” Badal said.
Badal said that any complacency on this count could further add to the woes of the farmers besides putting the national food security at risk.
He emphasised the need to sincerely implement the suggestions or recommendations of the agriculture economists to make agriculture far more economically viable so as to transform the destiny of the beleaguered peasantry.
He urged the Centre to immediately go for structural changes in the policy framework related to agriculture for providing level playing field to the farmers, who were already at the brink of the economic disaster.
On the United States-based NGO ‘Sikhs for Justice’(SFJ), Badal quipped, “Though its name is quite attractive and seem democratic but actually they opposed everyone whosoever intend to share this views with the Punjabi Diaspora settled there and hardly spared anyone neither me, nor Amarinder and other political leaders from India.”
Rubbishing the reports regarding allegations levelled by Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh for alleged involvement of Shiromani Akali Dal to fizzle out his foreign visit to Canada and USA, the Chief Minister retorted, “When Amarinder says anything just turn upside down to know the reality”.
Badal said that he was the first one to raise voice against the foreign authorities for not giving permission to Amarinder to interact with the Punjabis settled there and even termed it undemocratic and unfair. “In democracy, everyone has a right to express his views and the democratic values must be respected by one and all,” he added.