Lok Sabha member from Sangrur Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer on Monday raised the issue of farmers in Parliament in a thunderous manner and accused the Narendra Modi government of reneging on it's promises. He said that farmers are being prevented from coming to the national capital and veteran farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal has been on hunger strike for 21 days but the government is not worried at all.
Meet Hayer said that when the farmers had to stage protests to get the draconian laws repealed, 700 farmers were martyred during that time and they were promised in writing the MSP guarantee but the same has not been fulfilled yet. Jagjit Singh Dallewal is sitting on the Khanauri border not for his personal interests but for the sake of the farmers of the country.
While the government has waived off Rs. 10 lakh Crore of a few hundred industrialists, the loans of farmers who constitute half the population are not being waived. The Member Parliament further said that India has become the fifth largest economy in the world but the real situation is that we are at number 141 in per capita income and out of a population of 140 Crore, only 10 percent of the people earn more than Rs. 25,000 per month with 90 percent of the people earning less than Rs. 25,000.
A large number of these are farmers to whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised that their income would be doubled after the formation of the government in 2014. Alas, 11 budgets have been presented since then but not even a single time was any mention made about increasing the income of farmers.
Meet Hayer further said that there is no village in Punjab where the bodies of the youth who protected the country's borders are not found wrapped in the tricolour. Around 80 percent of sacrifices were made in freedom movement by the State and our farmers also contributed hugely to make the country self-reliant.
Today, the farmers of Punjab are not allowed to come to the capital even though they want to come on foot only in small numbers but the government is behaving in a dictatorial way. Today, the border between the two states has been made an international border.
Meet Hayer requested the government to fulfil the written promise and guarantee MSP to the farmers. Earlier, 700 farmers have given their lives and now no other farmer should lose his life and they should get their rights.