New Delhi, (Asian independent) With the farmers agitation continuing for more than three months, farmer leaders are also tweaking their tactics. This was apparent on Monday in a new policy that have adopted to counter the fluctuating number of farmers at Delhi’s borders.
Without any prominent farmer leader being present at the Ghazipur border on Monday, the number of farmers at the site of agitation was not low. This is unlike the last few days in which the numbers had begun to dwindle, leading farmer leaders to appeal to every village to send people to Delhi’s borders.
On Monday, the farmers mahapanchyat was organised in Uttarakhand’s Rudrapur, in which many farmers from Ghazipur border also participated. Despite this, the number of protesters at Ghazipur did not thin down substantially.
Reports say the credit for this must go to a rotation policy which was arrived upon at a recent meeting of farmer leaders.
Jagtar Singh Bajwa, spokesperson of the Kisan Andolan Committee Ghazipur, told IANS: “The idea is that farmers from all those places where a mahapanchyat has taken place must be requested to participate in the farmers’ agitation at Delhi’s borders. Even at Rudrapur, they were told to visit the borders and make their presence felt.”
Speaking about the rotation policy, Bharatiya Kisan Union UP in-charge Rajvir Singh Jadaun said: “People from many regions came to meet Rakesh Tikait when he was at the Ghazipur border. The number of people increases on the days he is here. The agitation has continued for a long time. The way the waves of the ocean rise and fall, the movement behaves in a similar manner.
“The number of people fluctuating at the Ghazipur Border can be attributed to farming. The crop of sugarcane is being cut and sowed in Uttar Pradesh these days. If you go further, mustard is being sowed as well. Other farming activity is taking place in Uttarakhand.
“So, we decided to implement a rotation policy. Farmer leaders decided that we need to agitate as well as do farming. After all, we have the responsibility of feeding the citizens of the country.
“As a part of this policy, we asked the farmers to keep visiting and returning from the borders to the village for as long as they wished. This will ensure that farming and agitation can happen at the same time.
As part of the rotation policy, BKU office bearers in various parts of the country remain in touch with each other. Word is sent from the Ghazipur border to the office-bearers, before farmers from a district head towards the Capital.
