Yechury: Conferring award to Swaminathan not enough, must endorse his suggestion

Communist Party of India Marxist general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Thursday accused the Centre of ignoring the Swaminathan Commissions reportHe said that conferring the Bharat Ratna to the agricultural scientist was not enough and the government should respect the people who feed the nationThe demand of farmers is for a minimum support price at 50 per cent of the cost of comprehensive production costsThat is exactly what the Swaminathan Commission has recommended and Swaminathan was conferred the Bharat Ratna by PM Modi himself recently Conferring awards is not sufficient Respecting the farmers and respecting the people who feed all of us is what is required of this government he saidYechury further called for an immediate end to the repression of the farmers and insists on conducting meaningful talks with the BJPled central governmentWe want an immediate end to this repression Meaningful talks that have to be conducted And the day after tomorrow along with the trade unions on the 16th of this month theres going to be a big nationwide action programme including some sectoral industrial strikes So this is something that the Modi government cannot ignore It has to immediately concede he saidYechury also condemned the central governments recent action against farmers at the PunjabHaryana Shambhu border and said This is barbarous the barbarity of this attack Weve never heard of drones being used to fire tear gas shells on the farmers And with all sorts of barricades that have been erected like it was erected during the historic farmer struggle they are trying to stop the march of the farmers to DelhiYechury also accused the BJPled central government of misleading the public with their willingness to engage in discussions with the farmers as these talks have not yielded any progressThey BJPled central government have said this often in the past for one whole year when the farmers historic struggle was going on Every time they repeat we are prepared for talks we are prepared for talks But what do those talks yield Those talks do not progress even an inch Its not a question of just sitting down to talk This is only misleading the public that the government is prepared for talks but talks on what issue How much is the government prepared to give And this is a legitimate demand on which there can be no compromise A minimum support price guaranteed assurance of lifting the harvest of the farmers at the minimum support price This is an essential must he saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever