Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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| Gen (retd) V K Singh garlanding the portrait of V P Singh at Mor Bhavan on Saturday. |
“Government cannot protect the interest of farmers. It cannot give justice to farmers. Price of fertilisers keeps increasing each year. There is a farmer’s suicide every hour,” said V K Singh
By Dheeraj Fartode
Accusing government of anti-farmers policy ex-chief of Army staff General V K Singh, on Saturday, exhorted farmers to unite and change the system.
Addressing a farmers’ gathering under the banner of Kisan Manch at Morbhavan, Singh said, “Government is giving a step-motherly treatment to farmers. Farmers should be aware of such political leaders and not vote for them in the upcoming elections.”
National President of Kisan Manch Vinod Singh, Pratap Goswami, Central General Secretary of Nag Vidarbha Andolan Samiti, Ahmed Kadar and others were present on the dais. Singh blamed wrong government policies for last 65 years for rising debts on farmers. “Government cannot protect the interest of farmers. It cannot give justice to farmers. Price of fertilisers keeps increasing each year. There is a farmer’s suicide every hour,” said Singh.
The former Army chief accused the government of being pro-industrialists and anti-farmer. “This subsidy on fertilisers is not for farmers, it is to benefit industries. If industries are deciding rates of their products then why farmers have no right to decide minimum support price (MSP) of farm products,” Singh asked.
Training his guns on Maharashtra Government Singh said that the government was using water from Vidarbha’s irrigation projects for sugarcane farming and power projects instead of region’s farmers. Singh also targetted land acquisition policies and said that these policies should be reviewed and restructured for farmers, not for industries.
He appealed to the farmers to unite and fight for their future. “Don’t fall prey to political leaders’ ‘Divide and Rule’ policy. It is just to grab votes,” Singh urged. Singh also cautioned farmers against opting for BT cotton. “Farmers have forgotten their ‘Desi’ breed of cotton and adopting BT cotton model. It has created water scarcity in the region,” he claimed.
Singh charged Rahul Gandhi with using the name of Kalawati for political mileage. “Kalawati remained empty handed even after hitting headlines of national newspapers,” he said. He added that all MLAs from Vidarbha were involved in corruption which has rendered the Vidarbha package as useless.
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