Boycott imported farm products: V.P. Singh

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, NOV. 28. Evoking memories of the `foreign goods boycott' campaign during India's freedom movement, the former Prime Minister, Mr. V.P. Singh, today angrily tore open a sachet of imported palmolein and emptied its contents on Chennai's Rajaji Salai, even as he called for resisting agricultural imports.

Charging the Centre with indifference and lack of concern to the farmers plight throughout the country following removal of restrictions on agricultural imports, Mr. Singh called upon farmers to unitedly carry on their struggle. It would prompt ``political leaders to follow you,'' he said.

Unmindful of the pouring rain, Mr. Singh, addressing a rally organised by the State unit of Janata Dal (Secular) outside the Chennai Port main gate here, said all categories of farmers were suffering under the present circumstances.

Referring to the imports of various agricultural commodities including edible oil, tea and rubber, depressing local prices, Mr. Singh said developed economies like the U.S. and Europe were heavily subsidising their agricultural exports to an extent of $ 363 billion a year.

On the Centre's removal of restrictions on import of 714 items including milk powder, Mr. Singh said this would `ruin' domestic producers and would have to be resisted. ``Now they want to produce MNCs' in farming, who will buy up the land and our farmers will be just labourers, and again become slaves,'' he said.

Mr. Singh, who was earlier helped to reach the make- shift dais in a wheel-chair, said that with input prices going up and farmers unable to get reasonable prices for their output, agriculture was becoming a ``loss-making proposition.'' The huge foodgrains stocks with the Food Corporation of India was not a symbol of plenty but of poverty as it showed that farmers had no purchasing power. He castigated the Centre's move to sell the foodgrains abroad at rockbottom prices.

The former Prime Minister, Mr. Deve Gowda, who along with the State JD(S) president, Mr. G.A. Vadivelu, earlier led a procession from near the Kamaraj statue to the venue, vowed to fight the anti-farmer policies of the Central and State Governments until the farmers' integrity was restored.

Expressing concern at local oilseeds prices plummeting due to imports, Mr. Gowda said the BJP-led coalition was riddled with contradiction in dealing with the situation. While the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Nitish Kumar, had maintained that import duty on this item could be hiked to 300 per cent to curb imports, the Vajpayee Government eventually increased the import tariff by just 20 per cent, he said.

Mr. Gowda said today's protest march was to oppose the Centre's ``indiscriminate imports'' of agricultural commodities, which would ``totally mar the country's agricultural economy.''

The JD(S) would organise a massive farmers' protest before Parliament House in Delhi on December 14, Mr. Gowda said.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : National
Next     : Jagir Kaur putting up a brave front