Agitating against farm laws, irate farmers stop goods train in Moga

Protesting against the new farm laws and certain corporate houses that would allegedly benefit from these laws, irate farmers on Friday stopped a goods train in Moga district of Punjab.

The agitators assembled at Dagru railway station and stopped a wheat-laden train carrying food grains to a storage facility set up by a corporate house in the village.

Baldev Singh Zeera, general secretary of the Punjab unit of Bhartiya Kisan Union (Krantikari), said that the move was part of the farmers’ agitation against big corporates allegedly being favoured by the Modi government.

An Adani group company, Adani Agri Logistics (AAL), has set up silos in Moga and Kaithal in Haryana having capacity of 2 LMT each. The Adani group entered into an agreement with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for setting up the silos.

The silos have been facilitating Food Corporation of India and have been given a 20-year guarantee for the usage of these storage facilities. The base depot in Dagru village near Moga is linked to three field depots in Chennai, Coimbatore and Bangalore, while the Kaithal base depot is linked to field depots at Navi Mumbai and Hooghly. Wheat stored in these depots is transferred to field depots for onward distribution.

AAL is also setting up another storage facility of 25000 MT in Kotkapura while more of them at Moga, Mansa, Nakodar and Barnala (each having 50,000 MT capacity) are in the pipeline. After Kaithal, the AAL is also setting up another silo having 50,000 MT capacity at Panipat in Haryana.

Thousands of farmers have been protesting since November last year at Delhi’s borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh demanding a rollback of the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and the Farm Services Act, 2020; and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

The protesting farmers have expressed apprehension that these laws would pave the way for the dismantling of the minimum support price (MSP) system, leaving them at the “mercy” of big corporates.

The Union government, however, maintains that the new farm laws will bring better opportunities to farmers and introduce new technologies in agriculture.