(Asian independent) The 2011 report of the Chief Ministers’ committee headed by the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi had recommended ‘legal status’ for Minimum Support Price (MSP).
BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi gave a solemn promise to the farmers across the nation in 2014 that MSP as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission (C2 plus 50% profit) would be implemented for two dozen crops if BJP was voted to power.
PM Modi did everything to bury the implementation of his solemn promise in all the six yrs after he occupied the chair in May 2014.
In Aug 2014, he appointed a HL committee under the chairmanship of Shantakumar to study the procurement system. The committee’s recommendations were in line with the expectations of WTO, neo-liberals, global finance and Modi himself. It favoured the abolition of FCI procurement and indirectly recommended the burial of MSP.
“Implementing the Swaminathan Commissions recommendation on MSP is not feasible as it will distort the market”: Addl Solicitor General of Modi govt told the Supreme Court in Feb 2015.
During the middle of Modi’s first term as PM, his non-descriptive agriculture minister told in Chandigarh that we had implemented all the recommendations of Swaminathan Commission except the one on MSP as it was not practical.
In his last budget speech, Arun Jaitley told a damned lie that his budget had paved the way to implement MSP as per the recommendation of Swaminathan Commission.
In all the six years, Narendra Modi did not utter a single word on his promised MSP. Nor any media person asked a question over his promise and the status of delivery.
Now in 2020, using the corona cover, he has come out with the three amazing Farm Laws which have no word on MSP.
Nor is he willing to give a ‘legal status’ to the MSP (C2 plus 50% profit) as demanded by the protesting farmers and as recommended by the Narendra Modi committee in 2011!
