Following Mission UP and Mission Uttarakhand, farmers body Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) observed an all-India Rosh (Anger) Diwas on March 21, 2022 to condemn the central government’s failure to come through on its promises.
As the name suggests, protesting farmers in groups, varying in strength from a group of 10 people to a hundred people, gathered to show their anger against the government’s unfulfilled assurances on December 9, 2021. Visuals came in on Monday from Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana and many other regions.
In Uttar Pradesh, hundreds of peasants joined the protest at Civil lines dharna sthal (protest site) in Allahabad city. SKM leaders Dr. Ashish Mital, Bharatiya Kisan Union-UP (BKU-UP) Youth President Anuj Singh, All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) leader Naseem Ansari, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) leader Akhil Vikalp and many other spoke during the event.
Speakers called upon farmers to launch a massive movement between April 11 and April 17 to reiterate farmers’ demand for a legal guarantee to Minimum Support Price (MSP) for all crops based on the Swaminathan Commission formula of C2+50 percent. They also demanded a reduction of diesel, fertilizers and seed prices by half.
“We hail the grand success of the farmers movement which they said led to farmers issues becoming the main election issues during recent elections,” SKM Prayagraj leader Raj Kumar Pathik.
Towards the end of the protest, farmers presented a memorandum of demands addressed to the President demanding immediate declaration of an MSP committee. Further, leaders said the government must answer other pending demands such as the withdrawal of all cases lodged against farmers during the protest, compensation to martyred farmers, removal of Lakhimpur-Kheri violence-accused Ajay Mishra from the Union Cabinet. Farmers also demanded that his son Ashish’s recent bail be cancelled and that the government withdraw cases against Lakhimpur farmers who are charged of murdering assailants on October 3, 2021.
Farmers groups also took out marches in Haryana’s Palwal, Madhya Pradesh’s Alirajpur and Jharkhand’s Rahe.
However, photos of stage protests flooded in from many other areas like Odisha’s Salania Keonjhar, Rohtak, Barnala, Uttarkhand’s Bajpur, Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul, Shimla, Rajkot, etc.
Farmers vacated Delhi borders in December 2021, hoping that the central government will come through on its promises. However, after one month of waiting, farmers observed a Betrayal Day (Vishwasghat Diwas) and resumed wide-scale mobilisations to demand their dues.
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