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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | On Delhi's campuses, farmers' outfit and Sainath explain agrarian crisis to students -Furquan Ameen

On Delhi's campuses, farmers' outfit and Sainath explain agrarian crisis to students -Furquan Ameen

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published Published on Nov 29, 2018   modified Modified on Nov 29, 2018
-The Telegraph

Farmers' march to capital on November 29-30 to demand special session of Parliament


A farmers’ organisation along with P. Sainath, the award-winning crusader for agriculturists, has been visiting college and university campuses across the country, explaining how agriculture distress affects students.

The main mover behind the campus cluster meetings is the All India Kisan Sangharsh Co-ordination Committee, an umbrella organisation of 200 farmers’ outfits, which wants to sensitise students to join the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi on November 29-30.

The farmers’ march has coincided with elections in five states. Such marches have seen a surge under the BJP’s rule at the Centre.

In one of the chaupal-like lecture sessions at Ambedkar University in Delhi, Sainath dissected the problems farmers face in rural India, which to most of his listeners was a world away from the urban college campuses.

He addressed the students directly. “Thousands like you are facing the prospect of dropping out of college and universities or are being asked to leave their hostels. Their parents are farmers who are absolutely unable to pay their hostel fee or tuition fee or mess fee,” he said.

“Everybody in the rural (areas) is not agrarian and everybody in the agrarian (sector) is not a farmer,” Sainath told the small audience in an attempt to explain the inter-connectedness of rural professions and people.

“Take the village mistry. In most parts of the country, villages have two or three carpenter families for two three villages. The mistry earns his living by serving the farmer. And they earn their income 25 to 30 per cent in cash and the rest in food. If you are a mistry, you are serving 30-40 farmers in your village. If I'm a farmer, I'll pay you 25-30 per cent in cash, for the rest I'll give you so many kilos in genhu (wheat), so many kgs of rice. They have reported a significant number of deaths of carpenters in Nalgonda,” Sainath said.

“Because if a farmer goes bankrupt, nobody is ordering the new bullock cart, nobody is ordering the new plough, nobody is even getting old tools retooled.”

This is the pitch Sainath and the Kisan Sangharsh Co-ordination Committee have followed in Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia, St Stephens College and several other campuses. It is yet unclear what the students made of Sainath’s words, though some seemed eager to know more about agrarian distress.

What is clear, however, is that the Kisan Sangharsh Co-ordination Committee has sensed an opportunity to cast the net wider after the Nashik-Mumbai farmers’ walk in March, when a section of the middle class came out to support farmers under the banner of Nation for Farmers.

“From Punjab University to Gauhati University, several outreach programmes for students were conducted,” Dinesh Abrol of the Kisan Sangharsh Co-ordination Committee said. “The first thing we wanted to do was to reach out to students in universities.”

He expects around 1,000 students to join the march in Delhi.

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The Telegraph, 28 November, 2018, https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/on-delhi-s-campuses-farmers-outfit-and-sainath-explain-agrarian-crisis-to-students/cid/1676883?ref=top-stories_home-template


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