Scores of trade union activists and farmers staged a demonstration in Mysuru on Tuesday demanding the abrogation of the farm laws against which farmers were agitating across the country.
Led by All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), farmers and activists said the farm will have a direct bearing on the food security of the country in the long run apart from jeopardising the future of the farmers.
The activists said the government should not only abrogate the three laws as it pertained to the future of the farming community, but it would also have a direct and indirect bearing on the entire population of the country.
The new laws as promulgated, will enable the business community and industrialists to take control over farming and the pricing mechanism will be determined by them, according to farmers. There were also apprehensions that the existing APMC markets and the minimum support price mechanism will cease and farmers would be at the mercy of the vagaries of market.
Describing the Centre under Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “anti-farmer and anti-people”, the AITUC said while the farmers are being pushed to the brink on one hand, the condition of workers was equally bad on the other. The trade union leaders said the government had diluted the labour law and in its pursuit of easing of doing business, the working class interests have been bartered to make it easy for managements to hire and fire, which had erased the concept of job security.
