A ₹ 2,000 profit per month for an acre shows the plight of farmers in a state like Haryana where 67% of people are dependent on farming out of which 80% are small or marginal who own less than two acres of land.
When people from non-farming background in Tamil Nadu are participating in protests to express solidarity with the farmers from Punjab against the Centre’s new farm laws, the real farmers are struggling to drain the flood water from their paddy fields in the delta districts of the state.
The three controversial farm laws may not have a direct impact on the agrarian community in Kerala, but Karshaka Samgham, the peasant wing of CPI M, has still joined the Delhi protests fearing long-term impact.
A look at Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol dancing around mustard fields of Punjab in the film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayengee gives one a feeling that farming in Punjab is a very pleasurable business and that the farmers too are happy and full of life. Of course, sons of the soil here are optimistic and energetic, but behind the broad smiles lies the uneasy burden of debt, suicides, landlessness and illnesses. An end to minimum support price (MSP), as is feared by protesters in Delhi, would sound the death knell for an average Punjab farmer.
