On 3rd October he claimed the new laws would benefit small farmers as they would now be free to sell their produce like apples anywhere and to anyone in the country. Rupinder Kumar, a small farmer in Punjab’s Fazilka district said, “The central government is saying that it is providing the freedom to farmers to sell their crop to anyone and anywhere in the country, which the farmers of the country have already been doing.”
On 12th December Modi spoke at a FICCI event about the “new markets and opportunities to farmers” that the new laws would open up even as lakhs of farmers were sitting at the Singhu border braving the biting cold. On 15th December he spoke to a group of Gujarat Farmers where he again made similar claims.
Addressing a farmers’ meeting in Madhya Pradesh on December 18 he said, “I believe there is no reason for distrust or place for lies in the farm reforms we have passed.”
Modi claimed the new laws would help farmers access advanced technologies. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar claimed that out of the 201 recommendations of the Swaminathan Committee, 200 were implemented under Modi’s leadership.
“Out of the 200 recommendations the government has claimed to implement, only 25 have been implemented during the Modi government. The remaining 175 recommendations were implemented during the previous UPA regime,” reported The Wire.
After having defended the farm laws, the Government is clearly reluctant to concede defeat and publicly admit they were wrong. Hence the frantic search for a face-saving solution and mechanism. It is more important to save the Prime minister’s face than do the right thing.
