Now, agitating farmers target Malls, force their closure

Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, November 8

In the course of their ongoing agitation for over one a half months against the Central Farm Acts, farmers, led by the Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan), today vent their ire at shopping malls here in protest against the Union government’s “pro-corporate” policies.

Groups of farmers held demonstrations at MBS and a few other shopping malls in the city, forcing their partial or full closure.

District general secretary of the BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) Sudagar Singh Ghudani said a policy decision had been taken to intensify the agitation and widen its ambit to include shopping malls where most of the corporate houses and multinational companies (MNCs) had their retail outlets. He said from now on, groups of farmers would continue their protests at all shopping malls in addition to toll plazas.

The BKU leader said the Central government was pursuing its secret agenda of handing over foodgrain business to corporate houses and MNCs and the three farm-related laws enacted recently were, in a way, first step towards making the farmers bonded workers for the corporates.

“The next step of the government, it seems, will be to force the farmers to hand over their land holdings to the big business houses and corporate houses so that they can monopolise over the farm operations and foodgrain business,” Ghudani said, adding that the refusal of the NDA government to resume the operations of goods trains in the state was an arm-twisting tactic to settle score with the agitating farmers.