Yogendra Yadav, politician and founder of Swaraj India, said on Sunday that in the next six months the elections will be fought on either the issue of jawan and kisan or Hindu or Musalman.
"If it is fought on the former, whichever party comes to power, India will take few more steps towards progress. If it will be fought on the latter about issues between Gujarati and Bihari or other communal and caste divides, irrespective of whoever wins, India will lose," said Yadav.
He was speaking at the Kisan Swaraj Sammelan held in Vidyapith.
"Politics is not only about political parties and governance and election. To understand kisan swaraj in totality we must understand politics in multiple dimension," said Yadav.
"If changes could be made to the GST in the dead of the night, the farmer issues can also be addressed with equal speed if politicians fear that the farmers can throw them out of power. The important question is to see whether we can make the farmers an election issue," said Yadav.
He said there was a need to hammer political parties with questions about farmers and farming so that the issue become an agenda for them.
Yadav said that farming diversity in India is so vast that one would believe they are independent islands.
"Yet, what is common across India among farmers is the despondence over agriculture. A farmer today does not want his son to take up farming. The farmer's self confidence is broken. Neither the farmer nor the farming family today has any respect left for what they do," said Yadav. He said it would be nice to see youngsters wearing t-shirts proudly proclaiming themselves as sons of farmers.
Dr GV Ramanjaneyulu of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture said that the focus has now shifted from moving out marginal and small farmers from agriculture to something else. Now people have realised that agriculture can see tremendous improvement with minimal investments if the government focuses on the small and marginal farmers, he said.
He also said that the loan waivers don't help small and marginal farmers as many happen to be tenant farmers; there is a need to unite them. "There is also a need to ensure that the farmers can access all the facilities at one place or under one umbrella," said Ramanjaneyulu.
He gave the example of the kisan mitra helpline where counsellors talked to farmers about their problems and each problem was followed up and individually resolved with the state or central machinery without the farmer having to do the running around.