NEW DELHI: After meeting overnight in Chandigarh for their third round of discussions,
Centre
and farmers will meet again on
Sunday
to discuss a way forward at a time when
talks
are stuck primarily on three key demands - legal guarantee to MSP, using comprehensive cost formula (C2+50%) to arrive at it & farm loan waiver. The protest is expected to expand with SKM deciding on Friday to "immediately intensify" the stir.
Farm stir likely to expandas SKM decides to join protest
Though the govt side — Union ministers Arjun Munda, Piyush Goyal and Nityanand Rai — assured farmer leaders they would get back to them for the fourth round of talks on Sunday evening after consulting higher-ups, the protesters decided to continue with their ‘Delhi Chalo’ call and to be stationed at
Shambhu border
between Punjab and Haryana.
The protest is, meanwhile, expected to expand with the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) deciding on Friday to “immediately intensify” the agitation with multiple calls for “massive actions in coordination with workers and all other sections of the people” in support of their 21-point demand charter.
Calling the third round of meeting quite “meaningful”, Union minister for information and broadcasting Anurag Thakur on Friday said, “We together have scheduled the next talks for Sunday. I am confident that there will be a good atmosphere on Sunday also. There will be talks and we will move towards resolving the issues.”
Besides Union ministers, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann too was present at the meeting that lasted for around five hours. Emerging from the meeting early Friday morning in Chandigarh, agriculture minister Arjun Munda too called the talks “positive” and said, “We all will find a solution peacefully”.
Although all pending demands of farmers were discussed in the meeting, Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM) coordinator Sarwan Singh Pandher said the focus was primarily on the three demands—legal guarantee to MSP, using comprehensive cost formula (C2+50%) and loan waiver.
Comprehensive cost (C2) includes imputed cost of capital and the rent on the farmers’ own land whereas the existing formula (A2+FL) being used to arrive at MSP includes all paid-out costs incurred by farmers and the value of family labour. MSPs are currently fixed at a level of at least 1.5 times of the costs arrived at using A2+FL formula.
As far as agreeing for legal guarantee to MSP is concerned, the govt side has called it an economically unfeasible proposition whereas farmers’ side argues that making it legal doesn’t mean govt should purchase every quintal of all 23 crops under the MSP regime.
Farmer leaders in the past noted that the actual govt expenditure would actually be smaller under the legally guaranteed regime as legal provisions would make the market prices above the MSP benchmark — a more attractive option for farmers to sell their produce outside the ‘mandis’.
Thakur while talking on MSP said the total purchase of wheat, paddy, pulses and oilseeds was Rs 5.5 lakh crore during Congress-led UPA regime where the Modi government has spent Rs 18.3 lakh crore towards procurement. “This shows that we increased the prices and also made purchases more than double,” said the minister.
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