Thousands of European Union (EU) farmers have been agitating for weeks to press home their varying demands including the availability of fuels and fertilisers at affordable costs, removal of regulatory burden concerning climate change and stopping cheaper import from non-EU countries.
In Poland, angry farmers pelted the EU building with eggs. In Belgium, France, Italy and Germany, farmers in their thousands blocked roads leading to their capitals and busy ports with tractors demonstrating their strong unity to uphold their common cause. They are awfully upset about rising costs of production and falling profits.
Thousands of miles away from Europe, farmers in India are on the streets for more than a week to demand guaranteed fair prices. They are now on a march towards Delhi after four rounds of failed talks with the government. But the police, it seems, are determined not to allow the protesting farmers to enter the city. Delhi borders have been reportedly fortified with several layers of barricades and barbed wires to prevent entry. The farmers have threatened that they would push through with heavy machinery such as bulldozers and earthmovers. The police have already fired teargas on farmers at a border crossing between Punjab and Haryana, two major agricultural states of India.
Two years back, thousands of Indian farmers organised a sit-in on the edges of New Delhi for over a year against agricultural laws. The government had to repeal the laws concerned in the end. This time at the heart of protests remains the demand for legislation that would guarantee minimum support prices for all farm produce.
What the farmers' protests either in the EU or India deliver in the end is difficult to predict now. For the Modi government, the event remains a major headache, because the ruling BJP faces general elections in the coming months.
Looking at what the farmers are doing in the EU and neighbouring India to guarantee fair prices for their produce, one has reasons to lament the helplessness of their counterparts in Bangladesh which is until now a predominantly agricultural economy. Despite a constant decline in its share in the country's gross domestic product (GDP), agriculture has kept the economy afloat by a large measure. Except for one or two years, agriculture has been growing at a reasonable rate and employing the largest chunk of the labour force.
The stories about the deprivation of the country's farming community have come to the fore again and again. Many more have, perhaps, remained untold, for the farmers do not have a voice in this country. The basic reason is that Bangladesh farmers are not organised. Thus, they are open to exploitation of all sorts. The vast majority of farmers are sharecroppers or owners of small pieces of arable land. Some of the problems they face are identical to those of their Indian counterparts. Then again a few problems are unique and complex. The sad part of the entire episode is that their stories that deserve to be heard by the policymakers go untold.
Given the problems they have been facing for ages, Bangladesh farmers were supposed to come to the streets protesting even more frequently than their counterparts in other countries. Instead, they bear with problems such as a hike in prices of diesel and fertilizers now and then, selling their goods at lower prices in the absence of an efficient marketing system for farm produce.
Major political parties here have their farmers' wings, but they hardly serve the cause of the peasantry. These wings are manned by urban people and do not maintain any link with farmers at the grassroots. A few left-oriented parties highlight the problems of the peasantry. That far and nothing more.
In recent years, some educated youths have taken up farming as a profession. They are the people who possess the knowledge and ability to organise farmers across the country and help press home the just demands of the latter. Will they ever think of taking up that responsibility of giving voice to the country's millions of deprived and exploited farmers?
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