New Delhi : The enduring protest by farm community in unprecedented numbers finally brought the centre down to its knees. The three controversial farm laws will be repealed, declared Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.
The giving-in marks monumental victory to farmers’ protest that refused to budge despite peaks of pandemic that claimed lives of their own, the weather onslaughts, high-handedness of government forces and violences, last spate being a deputy union minister’s son ploughing his car into peacefully protesting crowd UP’s Lakhimpur- Kheri last month.
The Bill repealing the three farm laws will be presented in the upcoming winter session of the parliament, said PM in his televised address to the nation. The buckling comes at a time when Assembly elections have reached threshold in the key state of Uttar Pradesh.
Context : The 3 farm laws in question relaxed sale, pricing and storage rules for farm produce – rules that for decades protected the country’s farmers from free market onslaughts. The biggest challenge the new laws posed was allowing private players to buy farm produce at market price and flex their warehousing limits. Up to now the farmers sell majority of their produce at government-controlled-wholesale markets or mandis that assure floor prices or more commonly known as minimum support price(MSP)
