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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Why Tens of Thousands of Maharashtra?s Farmers Are Marching Their Way to Mumbai -Parth MN

Why Tens of Thousands of Maharashtra?s Farmers Are Marching Their Way to Mumbai -Parth MN

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published Published on Mar 12, 2018   modified Modified on Mar 12, 2018
-TheWire.in

Protesting farmers are planning to encircle the assembly and press for demands they feel the government has betrayed them on: crop prices, a loan waiver, forest rights, procurement and more.

Shankar Waghere flings his plastic bag on the ground and hunches over on his wooden cane to gather his breath. Then he kneels down, panting, and closes his eyes. They remain shut for the next 15 minutes. It’s been a lot of walking today for this 65-year old. Around him, in the darkness, are some 25,000 other farmers.

“We have to fight for our rights,” he says, sitting on the Nashik-Agra highway in Igatpuri’s Raigadnagar locality. It is the first halt of a massive farmers’ morcha that began in Nashik town on March 6, on a busy Tuesday afternoon. The farmers plan to reach Mumbai on Sunday, March 11, and encircle the legislative assembly building the day after – to protest against the state government’s failure to fulfil its promises.

The Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ collective of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has called for this long march. One of the organisers, Ajit Navale, general secretary of the Kisan Sabha, says the government cannot get away with hollow words. “In 2015, we had protested for the farmers to get their [rights to the] forest land, better rates for crops, a loan waiver and so on,” he says. “The government is merely pretending to fulfil its promises. This time it is now or never.”

As the march moves along, more farmers from across Maharashtra – from Marathwada, Raigad, Vidarbha and other districts – are expected to join and the numbers are likely to multiply by the time the morcha reaches Mumbai, 170 km from its starting point. For now, most of the farmers already on the move are from Nashik district and nearby areas, many of them from Adivasi communities.

Waghere, from the Koli Mahadev community, has come from Nalegaon village in Dindori taluka of Nashik. Earlier in the day, he reached CBS Chowk in Nashik – 28 km from Nalegaon – by foot. The long walk to Mumbai began from this chowk later that afternoon.

“We have been cultivating the land for generations, yet it still comes under the forest department,” he says. “In spite of promises [to give land rights to Adivasi farmers under the Forest Rights Act of 2006]  we are not owners of the land.” In Waghere’s village, almost everyone cultivates rice. “The production cost for an acre is Rs 12,000. If the rains are good, we get 15 quintals of rice [per acre],” he says. “The current [market] rate is Rs 10 a kilo [Rs 1,000 per quintal]. How will we sustain? When I got to know of the march, I decided I will participate, come what may.”

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TheWire.in, 9 March, 2018, https://thewire.in/230943/maharashtra-farmers-protest-march-mumbai/


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