Accuse state of double standards; advocacy groups say both Centre and state favouring sugarcane growers.
After MP Raju Shetty’s Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna, which spearheaded the agitation over a minimum support price for sugarcane, scaled down its demand from Rs 3,400 to Rs 2,650 per tonne, the week-long rioting and unrest which saw 11 state transport buses torched and more than 30 damaged may have ended. But farmers in Vidarbha have expressed shock and dismay at what they are calling “double-standards in the way the government handles sugar farmers vis-a-vis cotton farmers.”
Refusing to accept it as a climbdown, Shetty told dna, “This is a long battle for survival. We still have several issues that need to be settled.”
He said he had little hope from the union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar-led informal group of ministers who have been asked by Manmohan Singh to finalise prices.
Alarm bells had gone off in the centre with similar protests intensifying in sugarcane belts across Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. On Tuesday, Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan met the PM after the situation in his own constituency snowballed. Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food K V Thomas has asked mill owners and farmers “not to precipitate the matter.”
According to Thomas, “Delay in harvesting and crushing affects the farmers, the sugar industry and, in the end the consumer. Operation schedules are already delayed. I appeal to farmers to cooperate with states and begin sending sugarcane to the factories immediately.”
Meanwhile farmer advocacy groups like Vidharbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) have accused the centre and the Maharashtra government of being biased. “The government, which has simply ignored the plight of over 11,000 cotton farmers who silently ended their lives, now seems to be bending over backwards to accommodate the sugar lobby because of the political stakes involved,” charged Kishore Tiwari of VJAS.
“Will they only take steps to redress farmers’ problems if they indulge in vandalism, arson and rioting?” He remembered how “the government machinery went into overdrive when Sonia Gandhi along with Sharad Pawar and other central ministers visited Vidarbha to launch a ‘pro-poor’ health scheme named after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on November 21. This event costed Rs 3-crore and at a time when four farmers had killed themselves over debt in the region.”
Tiwari warned how the Maoist groups in Gadchiroli were waiting to tap into the larger resentment among the over three million debt-trapped farmers.
“They recently called for a bandh citing government apathy to farmer suicides in Vidharbha. This should be a wake-up call for the authorities.”
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