Day 254

Toll 563+

Kisan Sansad – Day 12

The Kisan Sansad will continue to discuss Minimum Support Price today. Here are a two questions farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal raised this morning on MSP. If you can answer them, good on you. I can’t. I am struggling to answer.

1. All goods in the country are marked Maximum Retail Price. Why is very limited farmers’ produce offered Minimum Support Price? Why is one Maximum and another Minimum, that too grossly violated?

2. The cost of genuinely implementing MSP on all 23 crops, according to the C2 + 50% formula (see August 4th post) is Rs 1.28 lakh crore. The current cost of importing oil seeds, lentils, other foods is Rs 1.70 lakh crore. Which figure is smaller?

How can government – that strangely claims to be broke in spite of earning Rs 2.13 lakh crore in 2019-20 on petroleum taxes alone – save money?

Meanwhile, a 1000 farmers from Tamil Nadu reached Singhu yesterday and some of them will participate in the Kisan Sansad. In Telangana, 500 adivasis undertook a 70-kilometre and 5-day-long protest from Aswaraopeta to Kothagudem, asking for stopping of eviction of adivasi farmers from podu land, for granting rights over forest produce and for the legal right of MSP.