The Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) will hold a district-level farmers’ convention in Mysuru on February 13 to mark the 89th birth anniversary of the KRRS founder late Prof. M.D. Nanundaswamy.
The convention is also to express the farmers’ ire against the anti-farmer policies being pursued by the Centre and the State, said Hoskote Basavaraj of KRRS.
The farmers’ convention will be appointed by representatives of Samyukta Kisan Morcha, all State-level office bearers of KRRS, activists propounding the cause of agriculture, youngsters sympathetic to the cause of farmers, members of progressive organisations, etc.
Mr. Basavaraj said farmers will have a bleak future and agriculture will be badly affected if the current policies of the Centre and the State governments are not challenged. The convention will reiterate its key demands and seek their implementation. This includes enacting a law to make minimum support price (MSP) for agricultural produce mandatory. The price fixation should be based on the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report on agriculture, a withdrawal of amendment to the APMC Act, waiver of agricultural loans to farmers among others.
The demand before the State government is to act tough on micro financiers and enact a law to put an end to their atrocities under the guise of loan recovery. Mr. Basavaraj said the forthcoming State Budget should be pro-farmer, and the Congress should implement all the promises made to farmers in the election manifesto of 2023 including the withdrawal of amendments to the land reforms act introduced by the previous BJP government.
The State and the Centre have been urged to ensure that the subsidised agricultural loan that was available to farmers under NABARD should continue and the allocation should not be slashed under any circumstances.
Drawing attention to the increase in human-animal conflicts, the farmers have urged the State government to increase the compensation to victims of conflict to ₹25 lakh, apart from providing government jobs to one of the family members of the deceased, free education to the children of the victim, etc.
The KRRS has expressed its opposition to the proposed amusement park near KRS and said that the government should drop it. Other demands include clearing arrears due to sugarcane farmers, enhancement of fair and remunerative price for sugarcane to ₹4500 a ton, etc.
