DNA Edit: Killing The Kisan

The protests in Mandsaur, which saw the lives of six farmers being snuffed out, have now assumed proportions of a full-blown crisis.

Latest reports indicate that the protests have spread to six districts, while the violence surrounding the farmers’ demand continues unabated. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has jumped into damage control mode by declaring a price stabilisation fund of Rs 1,000 crore.

Apart from this, he has also announced compensation of Rs 1 crore to the kin of the dead and Rs 5 lakh to those injured. This hasn’t proved to be much of a salve in Mandsaur where over a dozen vehicles were set on fire, while the area Collector and Superintendent of Police faced public ire for their delay in coming to grips with the situation. Meanwhile, the state continues to be on a boil.

Apart from Mandsaur, Neemuch, Ratlam, and Indore districts have reported cases of vehicles being torched and police officers being manhandled. State Home Minister Bhupendra Singh has ordered a judicial probe, but the actual chain of events that led to police shooting still remains unclear.

A claim that the police fired when they feared for their life is being volunteered by the authorities. Whatever the truth of the events leading to the killings may be, it seems irrelevant to the farmers coming out in droves in Madhya Pradesh, enraged, no doubt, by the price collapse — a consequence of bumper crop production. In adjacent Maharashtra, the situation of farmers is not a far cry from those in Madhya Pradesh.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who till now had the peasants on his side, seems to be losing the plot as the concept of a strike, until now the domain of the organised labour force, is now animating the unorganised rank and file of farmers. That this strike is continuing even when farm loan waivers of Rs 30,000 crore have been declared is an indication of the grave, silent crisis afflicting the states’ peasants.

Meanwhile, in Karnataka, BJP leader Jagdish Shettar has raised a demand for farm loan waivers and has threatened an agitation. Last year, demonetization bought the wholesale agriculture mandis across India to a standstill, and the preceding two years — 2014 and 2015 — were marked by drought. It is ironic but true that the good monsoon last year which led to a bumper crop has sent the crop prices plummeting. MSPs were devised by the government to protect farmers from market fluctuations.

However, low MSPs have meant that farmers have little option than to sell their yield at those very prices and continue living under a debt burden.