Solov does a Veeru, but it’s a tragedy

NAGPUR: Farmer Dnyaneshwar Solov, 35, broke both his legs when he jumped from a water tank on Tuesday in Amravati’s Chandur Bazar town, stunning policemen and curious citizens.

He was not alone in his protest jump. Over 300 agitated farmers and political workers climbed water tanks across Vidarbha in what was termed as a ‘Sholay-style’ agitation. All this, when almost all NCP ministers air-dashed to New Delhi by a specially hired chartered plane to wish their leader Sharad Pawar on his 67th birthday.

But unlike the happy ending to an inebriated Veeru’s ‘tamasha’ in the Bollywood superhit, Solov’s real-life protest met a painful end. Late evening, he was shifted to Nagpur with head injuries and multiple fractures in his legs. He was demanding loan waiver, but half the cabinet was in Delhi waiting for Pawar to cut the cake.

Unconfirmed reports suggest two other farmers, also taking part in the protest in the region, had also jumped from the water tanks, in Hinganghat and Achalpur. The officials, already in a tizzy, did not confirm the reports till late evening.

Independent legislator from Achalpur, Amravati, Omprakash alias Bacchu Kadu, spearheading the agitation, is raising a charter of ten demands: full loan waiver, Rs 5000-per-hectare aid, fast completion of irrigation projects, and petitioning the centre to raise import duty on cotton to 60 per cent, among other things.

After the police put spoke to his attempt to ascend the Vidhan Bhawanbuilding earlier in the day, Kadu rushed out of the assembly premises only to emerge on a water tank in Ayodhya Nagar in Nagpur with his supporters, much to the chagrin of the police. Kadu and his supporters, who wanted the home minister to come to them and make an announcement of relief to the cotton farmers, warned that they would jump one by one if the police tried to suppress their protest.

“I will sit here with my supporters till December 14,” he said, “and if demands are not met with till then, we’ll jump. It doesn’t matter if I die in the protest.” An ex-Shiv Sena worker, Kadu said despite the CM and PM packages, farmers in Vidarbha continue to take their own lives because of the fundamental follies in some of the policies. “We’ve had enough of glib talking from the government, we now want concrete action to bail them out,” he said. “We don’t see any minister taking our problems seriously,” he said angrily. Growing fiercer with every day, farm protests are taking dramatic turns in the region. Last Friday, police had to shoot farmers when they turned violent in a procurement centre at Wani.