The farmers’ protest against the Centre’s new ordinance on sugar cane pricing made the day for parties outside the UPA and even some of UPA’s neglected allies. This was an issue on which they ferociously cornered the government, and for the first time after the UPA government came back to power in May 2009, forced it on a back foot.
While the Congress claimed the prime minister’s decision to “tweak” the ordinance on pricing of sugar cane was at the instance of AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, the opposition appeared jubilant.
At the end of a day marked by farmers’ protests in Delhi and noisy scenes in parliament, prime minister Manmohan Singh had to concede that the ordinance which fixed a centrally administered Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) for sugar cane at Rs130 per quintal would be “tweaked.” Plainly, the FRP would be upwardly revised. Sources told DNA that the upward revision could be as high as Rs200 per quintal for sugar cane. An all party meeting has been fixed on Monday morning to discuss the matter.
The ferocity of the attack by protesting farmers and the opposition clearly unnerved the government, but it claimed that the “critical intervention” in the matter was made by Rahul Gandhi. After meeting his Cabinet colleagues — agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P Chidambaram — the prime minister decided not to allow the situation to become a political powder keg.
All day long, however, Delhi was laid siege to by thousands of farmers, and a united opposition, including the BJP, Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Samajwadi Party, the Janata Dal (U) and the CPI(M). The CPI first disrupted Parliament and later addressed the crowd.
“We will not allow parliament to function unless the ordinance is withdrawn,” Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav said.
Ajit Singh, from whose Meerut-Baghpat area of influence most farmers had come, demanded at least Rs250 per quintal price for sugar cane. “If this price is not given, then no farmer will agree to grow sugar cane, and these Delhiwalas who are buying sugar at Rs40 per kg, will find it difficult to buy it for even Rs200 per kg,” he said at a rally at the protest site.
The bitter battle over sugar may be over for now, but it has served like an alarm bell for the Congress over how fragile its hold on farmer-friendly policies can become. The mobilisation by the opposition also demonstrates that the rest of the Winter Session will be no cakewalk for the government.
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