To break ice, Union ministers hold key talks with farmers protesting central laws

This is the second attempt by the government to negotiate with the farmers and break an impasse following a cultivators’ agitation in some states, particularly Punjab, against the Centre’s move to open up agricultural markets in the country.

Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar and railways, food and consumer affairs minister Piyush Goyal have begun talks with a delegation of representatives of farmers from Punjab, who are protesting a set of laws passed recently to liberalise the farm sector, at the national capital’s Vigyan Bhawan on Friday.

Members of farmers' unions hold a demonstration by blocking the Delhi-Amritsar Highway on the Punjab-Haryana border to protest the new farm reform laws in Shambhu, Patiala district, Punjab, on November 05.(Bharat Bhushan/HT Photo)

At least 40 leaders of various farmers’ bodies, including constituents of the All-India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella platform spearheading the protests, are participating in the talks, the first meeting that agitating farmers are holding with Cabinet ministers.

This is the second attempt by the government to negotiate with the farmers and break an impasse following a cultivators’ agitation in some states, particularly Punjab, against the Centre’s move to open up agricultural markets in the country.

Agriculture secretary Sanjay Agarwal had met a farmers’ delegation on October 14, after inviting them for talks, to convince them to end their protest, but the meeting had ended in a deadlock.

The ongoing talks appear to be an attempt by the government to be accommodative of a pre-condition set by farm leaders during their meeting with the agriculture secretary on October 14 that any talks must happen in the presence of Union ministers and not just at the bureaucratic level.

Farmers in Punjab have launched protests, blockading rail tracks and road transport, since the government enacted three farm-sector laws in September, creating a key political challenge for the Narendra Modi government.

The three laws, together, allow agribusinesses to freely trade farm produce by easing restrictions, permit private traders to stockpile essential commodities for future sales and lay down new rules for contract farming.

Farmers protesting these changes say the reforms could make them vulnerable to exploitation, erode their bargaining power and weaken the government’s minimum support price (MSP) system, which offers cultivators assured prices from the government, largely for wheat and rice.

The Modi government has said the reforms were unrelated to the MSP system, which, it assured, would continue to exist. Farmers, however, aren’t convinced.

“The talks are on and they are on complex issues. We will be in a position to comment only when they conclude,” said Avik Saha, the secretary of All-India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, which is participating in the meeting.

Farmer organisations are likely to press for the MSP system to be written into law, which is high on their agenda.

On October 30, food and consumers affairs minister Piyush Goyal and agriculture minister Narendra Tomar, interacting with reporters, said that the “Centre’s door was open for talks with the farmers”. They had said the new reforms would allow farmers greater access to markets and spur investment in the sector.

The government is likely to issue a statement once the talks conclude, an official said.