The long preparation and efforts taken by Swaraj Abhiyan through various struggles and efforts to coordinate all the farmers movements and federations over two years has now come realise that a greater collective and coordinated move towards gaining their rights is necessary. Farmers from all over India have started their journey through various means to meet in Delhi on November 20th. It is expected that over 500.000 farmers from all over the country will join. The Tamil Nadu Land Rights Federation and RIEH Asia is part of this march.
They wrote this open letter to Modi, the Indian Prime Minister:
Dear Shri Narendra Modi,
We are farmers: women and men, landowner, sharecropper, tenant, forest gatherers and landless cultivators. We are primary producers: we grow crops, we collect forest produce, we rear animals and poultry and we fish. We use our labour to sustain life on this planet; yet we find it hard to sustain our own lives. We are told we are ‘annadatas’; yet we cannot feed our families. We are a majority in this democracy; yet our voice is not heard. More than half of us are women; yet we remain invisible. Our Constitution gives us Right to Life; yet we are forced to commit suicide.
Why? What is it that causes this tragedy?
It is not that we are lazy. We work very hard. We keep producing more and more. In the last ten years, we have raised the nation’s production of food one and half times. We have done our bit for the nation but why has the nation not done its bit for us?
It is not just the nature. Over the years, nature is more capricious. We suffer more droughts, more floods, more unpredictable climate than ever before. But why should we pay the price for changes in climate? Why don’t we get protection against natural calamities like farmers elsewhere do? And, why don’t we earn well even in a year when the nature is kind?
And it is not just the market. Everyone else seems to be doing well. Companies, businessmen, and salaried employees – everyone is earning better. Fertilizer, pesticide and seed companies are making big profits. Food industry and big retail are thriving. But a farmers’ family earns only Rs. 3,884 per month from farming, less than the minimum wages for unskilled workers! Why do we, who actually produce and feed others, lose out continuously?
After years and years of suffering, waiting and hoping, we realize that it’s about state policies, governmental action and political will. Governmental policies are driving the agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides. Instead of helping us in this hour of need, we are still being made to subsidize other sectors of the economy. Successive central and state governments have withdrawn whatever little support we used to get and have left us at the mercy of market forces and vagaries of nature. What you call ‘development’ is nothing but our systematic loot.
Mr. Prime Minister, we trusted you in 2014. We believed your promises, but you reneged. We thought you would protect our land, but you tried to snatch it. We faced droughts, floods and other calamities, but adequate relief never arrived. We endured crash in crop price without the minimum support. This is when we needed your helping hand, but you cut down spending on agriculture. And we suffered demonetization without any gains. We feel abandoned and betrayed.
Hence this final appeal, this two-point Charter of Demands. We do not ask you for anything except that you make good your own promises. We do not claim more than what everyone else in this country can enjoy. We do not demand what we do not desperately need. And deserve. We, the annadatas, wish to start afresh on a clean slate. We wish to contribute to the making of future India.
We are,
Farmers of India
Find the Charter of Demands here.
They wrote this open letter to Modi, the Indian Prime Minister:
Dear Shri Narendra Modi,
We are farmers: women and men, landowner, sharecropper, tenant, forest gatherers and landless cultivators. We are primary producers: we grow crops, we collect forest produce, we rear animals and poultry and we fish. We use our labour to sustain life on this planet; yet we find it hard to sustain our own lives. We are told we are ‘annadatas’; yet we cannot feed our families. We are a majority in this democracy; yet our voice is not heard. More than half of us are women; yet we remain invisible. Our Constitution gives us Right to Life; yet we are forced to commit suicide.
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| Christy, farmers' rally preparation from Tamil Nadu to Delhi |
Why? What is it that causes this tragedy?
It is not that we are lazy. We work very hard. We keep producing more and more. In the last ten years, we have raised the nation’s production of food one and half times. We have done our bit for the nation but why has the nation not done its bit for us?
It is not just the nature. Over the years, nature is more capricious. We suffer more droughts, more floods, more unpredictable climate than ever before. But why should we pay the price for changes in climate? Why don’t we get protection against natural calamities like farmers elsewhere do? And, why don’t we earn well even in a year when the nature is kind?
And it is not just the market. Everyone else seems to be doing well. Companies, businessmen, and salaried employees – everyone is earning better. Fertilizer, pesticide and seed companies are making big profits. Food industry and big retail are thriving. But a farmers’ family earns only Rs. 3,884 per month from farming, less than the minimum wages for unskilled workers! Why do we, who actually produce and feed others, lose out continuously?
After years and years of suffering, waiting and hoping, we realize that it’s about state policies, governmental action and political will. Governmental policies are driving the agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides. Instead of helping us in this hour of need, we are still being made to subsidize other sectors of the economy. Successive central and state governments have withdrawn whatever little support we used to get and have left us at the mercy of market forces and vagaries of nature. What you call ‘development’ is nothing but our systematic loot.
Mr. Prime Minister, we trusted you in 2014. We believed your promises, but you reneged. We thought you would protect our land, but you tried to snatch it. We faced droughts, floods and other calamities, but adequate relief never arrived. We endured crash in crop price without the minimum support. This is when we needed your helping hand, but you cut down spending on agriculture. And we suffered demonetization without any gains. We feel abandoned and betrayed.Hence this final appeal, this two-point Charter of Demands. We do not ask you for anything except that you make good your own promises. We do not claim more than what everyone else in this country can enjoy. We do not demand what we do not desperately need. And deserve. We, the annadatas, wish to start afresh on a clean slate. We wish to contribute to the making of future India.
We are,
Farmers of India
Find the Charter of Demands here.
thanks
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