Farmer unions will join hands with industrial workers and other sections of people to spearhead a protracted struggle from next month to protest against the Centre’s anti-people economic policies, All India Kisan Sabha national president Ashok Dhawale said.
Over four lakh farmers had ended their lives between 1995 and 2020 as per the data compiled by the National Crimes Record Bureau(NCRB), and 25% of them occurred during the Narendra Modi regime as farming had become a losing proposition in the wake of ever-increase cost of farm inputs including seeds, fertilisers and pesticides on the one hand, and unremunerative prices for their produce on the other, he observed while speaking on the agrarian crisis in Ongole on Wednesday.
Mr. Dhawale, one of the key leaders of Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella organisation of farmers that forced the Centre to take back the three controversial farm laws, said only when farmers got minimum support price(MSP) as per the formula evolved by noted agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan(1-1/2 of times the cost of production) that they could continue in the profession.
