<p>With Tuesday’s Bharat Bandh in solidarity with the farmers, a new Shaheen Bagh-type protest is gaining pace in Maharashtra – the Kisan Bagh movement.</p>.<p>The Jan Andolanichi Sangharsh Samiti (JASS), a body of 70-odd organisations, unions, NGOs, is spearheading the campaign.</p>.<p>On Tuesday, outside the Pune Collectorate, a group of 50-odd farmers staged a sit-in and they claim to do so till the three farm laws are repealed. The agitation in Pune is led by Baba Adhav, the 90-year-old 'hero' of the working class.</p>.<p>Baba Adhav had taken part in the Independence movement, Samyukta Maharashtra movement, protests against Emergency and several other protests and campaigns.</p>.<p>Coinciding with International Human Rights Day on Thursday, a group will start a sit-in outside Konkan Bhavan, which houses the Divisional Commissioner’s office of Konkan region.</p>.<p>“The peaceful protests need to continue. We want to cover all the regions - Konkan, Western Maharashtra, North Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha,” Vishwas Utagi, the convenor of JASS, told DH on Wednesday.</p>.<p>“The laws would undermine the autonomy of the farming community and reduce them to dependent producers within the structure of corporate farming. Under the banner of the ‘One Nation, One Market’ dominated by large corporations, the laws would render the long standing protection of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) redundant, which was critical in regulating agricultural produce and ensuring food security in the country,” he said.</p>.<p>According to Utagi, the agrarian economy has been in crisis over the six-and-a-half years of BJP rule as the increase to the MSP has been deliberately suppressed, credit to rural areas shrunk along with a year on year reduction in government expenditure. While the existing agricultural produce markets and the MSP mechanism are not without flaws and require change, turning agriculture over to corporates is not the solution, Utagi said.</p>.<p>“Recommendations for reforms made by M S Swaminathan, who chaired the National Commission for Farmers, have been completely ignored by the BJP while promising ‘doubling farming incomes by 2022’. The new laws will not just affect large farmers, they will impoverish small and marginal peasants and make millions of landless agricultural workers unemployed, changing the very structure of the agrarian economy.</p>.<p>"In an economy where manufacturing, industry and services fail to create jobs, the agrarian economy forms the backbone for the livelihood for nearly half the country’s people,” he added.</p>
<p>With Tuesday’s Bharat Bandh in solidarity with the farmers, a new Shaheen Bagh-type protest is gaining pace in Maharashtra – the Kisan Bagh movement.</p>.<p>The Jan Andolanichi Sangharsh Samiti (JASS), a body of 70-odd organisations, unions, NGOs, is spearheading the campaign.</p>.<p>On Tuesday, outside the Pune Collectorate, a group of 50-odd farmers staged a sit-in and they claim to do so till the three farm laws are repealed. The agitation in Pune is led by Baba Adhav, the 90-year-old 'hero' of the working class.</p>.<p>Baba Adhav had taken part in the Independence movement, Samyukta Maharashtra movement, protests against Emergency and several other protests and campaigns.</p>.<p>Coinciding with International Human Rights Day on Thursday, a group will start a sit-in outside Konkan Bhavan, which houses the Divisional Commissioner’s office of Konkan region.</p>.<p>“The peaceful protests need to continue. We want to cover all the regions - Konkan, Western Maharashtra, North Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha,” Vishwas Utagi, the convenor of JASS, told DH on Wednesday.</p>.<p>“The laws would undermine the autonomy of the farming community and reduce them to dependent producers within the structure of corporate farming. Under the banner of the ‘One Nation, One Market’ dominated by large corporations, the laws would render the long standing protection of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) redundant, which was critical in regulating agricultural produce and ensuring food security in the country,” he said.</p>.<p>According to Utagi, the agrarian economy has been in crisis over the six-and-a-half years of BJP rule as the increase to the MSP has been deliberately suppressed, credit to rural areas shrunk along with a year on year reduction in government expenditure. While the existing agricultural produce markets and the MSP mechanism are not without flaws and require change, turning agriculture over to corporates is not the solution, Utagi said.</p>.<p>“Recommendations for reforms made by M S Swaminathan, who chaired the National Commission for Farmers, have been completely ignored by the BJP while promising ‘doubling farming incomes by 2022’. The new laws will not just affect large farmers, they will impoverish small and marginal peasants and make millions of landless agricultural workers unemployed, changing the very structure of the agrarian economy.</p>.<p>"In an economy where manufacturing, industry and services fail to create jobs, the agrarian economy forms the backbone for the livelihood for nearly half the country’s people,” he added.</p>
