Farm union leaders submit memo to Warring over Centre’s draft policy

In accordance with a decision taken by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, members of various farmer organisations today met Member of Parliament from Ludhiana Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and submitted him a memorandum. The morcha has decided to hold agitations against the Union government’s draft National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing, which aims to improve agricultural marketing in India. The policy was released by the Union Agriculture Ministry for public comments.

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General secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) termed the draft policy as a reincarnation of the three annulled farm laws and said it was being forced through back door via state governments. “The policy is anti-farmer,” said the SKM, an umbrella body of farm unions which had spearheaded a mass agitation in 2020-21, forcing the government to repeal the three contentious agri-marketing legislations.

Chamkaur Singh, president of All-India Kisan Sabha, said that the new policy was an attack on government-supported markets and aimed at privatising them to help multinational corporations. They alleged that the new policy would help big companies to control the agri-retail trade and agri-processing industry.

“The National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing has no provision for MSP declaration, government procurement and for food storage for supply to public distribution system. It caters only to buffer stocks,” said Hardev Singh Sandhu, a farm leader.

On the proposal to integrate both private and public sectors through advanced technologies such as digital public infrastructure, block chain, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the farm union leaders said these reforms also proposed deregulation, effectively allowing the private sector, specifically corporate agri-businesses, to establish dominance over production, processing and marketing.