Farmers’ politics singes Sikar, district bandh called on Thursday, may spread to other parts
Farmer agitation is not new to Rajasthan. It’s again simmering. This time from Sikar and it’s likely to spread to other parts also. With elections next year, farmers’ protest is posing a tough challenge for chief minister Vasundhara Raje. Farmers are demanding crop loan waiver and right pricing of Minimum Support Price (MSP) of key crops.
Two days ago, Sikar, just 100 kilometres from capital Jaipur, was completely hijacked by thousands of farmers who gathered from surrounding area to register their agitation. A day after on Thursday, again farmers have called for district-wide bandh in Sikar which is likely to throw life out of gear in the district.
“We want loan waiver as promised by the government. We also want the government to fix 1.5 times value of every crop produce of the farmer, year-long purchase of crop produce at village level and a permanent mechanism for crop purchase,” said a farmer leader.
CM adept at dealing with issues
The chief minister has proven her political acumen several times during this tenure. The way she handled Gurjar and Jat agitation, it looks like she will be able to resolve farmers issues as well. She has emerged as a mass leader with a political maturity in her approach. Raje will go all out to woo farmers who form a large vote bank
In February this year, Raje, who handles power portfolio also, brought cheers on faces of farmers by rolling back hike in power tariff on agriculture connections retrospectively from September 2016. Farmer were agitation against the hike of 25 paise per unit proposed by the Electricity Regulatory Commission.
But in this case, the issue is little complicated and has compounded the woes of Raje. She won’t be able to garner any financial aid from central government for the loan waiver. Finance minister Arun Jaitley has categorically denied any support to state governments for crop loan waiver. He said if a state announces loan waiver, it will have to fund it through own sources. According to an estimate, Rajasthan will need Rs 44,000 crore to fund loan waiver and at this point, the financial health of the state doesn’t allow this.
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