Farmers protesting their long-standing demand for guaranteed minimum pricing for their crops attempted to march to the capital, New Delhi, on Friday, but were met with tear gas by Indian police.
In an attempt to rekindle the spirit of a historic protest in 2021, when they overran the city on tractors, farmers this week rekindled their dormant “March to Delhi” movement.
In preparation for the march, authorities erected thick barricades of concrete blocks and razor wire lines to halt the farmers in Shambhu, which is roughly 200 kilometers north of the capital.
In order to keep the demonstrators from communicating with one another, authorities also shut down mobile internet services along the march route.
The farmers breached a portion of the roadblock while waving blue and yellow flags before the cops stopped them.
Sarwan Singh Pandher, a farmer leader, told reporters, “We had four rounds of talks with the government in February, but there have been no further discussions on our demands since then.”
“We want the government to allow us to protest as part of our democratic right.”
Farmers are requesting a wide range of concessions, such as loan waivers and more compensation for land the government purchased some years ago, in addition to price assurances for their harvest.
Due to their vast numbers, farmers in India have political clout, and the current protests coincide with the opening of the national parliament.
According to official statistics, agriculture provides a living for two-thirds of India’s 1.4 billion inhabitants and contributes close to a fifth of the nation’s GDP.
A significant obstacle to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s attempts to restructure the agriculture industry was the more than one-year-long protests against the measures in November 2020.
Three controversial rules that farmers said would allow private firms to control the nation’s agriculture industry were repealed by Modi a year later as a result of their campaign.
