Reacting to the notice issued to the Centre by the Supreme Court on Wednesday, proposing formation of a committee with representatives from both the government and farmer unions to end the deadlock over the three farm laws, Shiv Kumar Sharma better known as Kakkaji said that government’s next move will dictate whether and soon the deadlock ends.
News18 spoke to the 65-year-old farmer activist, who was one of the leaders who spearheaded the movement of farmers in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur in June 2017 and has repeatedly staged protests against the Centre on the issue of MSP. He is one of the people leading farmers protests at Delhi borders.
How do you react to today’s development from the Supreme Court?
What step the government now takes will decide how soon, and whether at all, this deadlock between farmers and the government will end.
And how do you rate the government’s commitment to end the deadlock till now?
So far there have been six rounds of talks between farmers and the government but nothing has come of it. Now we are observing changes in the stance of the government. A few days back the Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the government was willing to work on all the suggestions in the farm laws that were made by farm leaders.
Now the union agriculture minister, Narendra Tomar, says that the government will “consider” the suggestions that we make. So now the government sees to be going back on its word.
With the deadlock showing no signs of being resolved, how do you see movement on this issue in near future?
People in power have tried everything from saying that the farmers’ led protests were Punjab centric they failed at that propaganda, they tried to label us as Khalistanis and failed, their allegations about us getting foreign funding failed, even their move to get some namesake farmer leaders for photo-op and to parrot their line also failed.
Now it seems that the BJP is now going to start a last ditch move to start a massive propaganda campaign against us. To convince people that somewhere it is the farmers that are at fault, not the government. Let them try this also.
But the farmers have survived all this bad press and still continue to press for their demands.
The government will ultimately have to agree to our demands. India is still a democracy. This country has seen many autocrats come and go. We will sure survive this as well. However years it takes, forget months, we are not going to go back from where we are today.
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday said that the ongoing farmers’ protest at Delhi borders is an “exception” and “limited to one state”.
There are 800 tractors that started from various parts of Madhya Pradesh that are parked right now near Palwal where they were stopped 20 days ago. We are still right there. The government is scared which is why it is detaining farmer leaders everywhere in the country from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh.
Allow the movement of all farmers to Delhi. Within three days you will see more than 8 crore farmers inside the national capital. This is the biggest movement of farmers this country has ever seen. The common person on the road, who has nothing to do with farming also, supports us now.
This government is bothered by nothing except its ego. I urge it to leave aside its ego and talk to the people. After all being in positions of authority, this is your responsibility.
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