The meeting of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao with leaders of farmers unions from 26 States on the second day, Sunday, unanimously adopted a resolution urging him to lead a nationwide campaign to unite farmers for struggles right from the village level.
Leaders at the meeting urged Mr. Rao to prepare the blueprint for the struggles taking into consideration the changed agricultural scenario in the country.
Earlier, Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao sought democratic agitations and Parliamentary form of struggles like it took place in the Statehood movement of Telangana for resolving the problems of agriculture and farmers in the country. The struggles should reach a stage where people who set up obstacles to agriculture would be forced to raise ‘Jai Kisan’ slogans like those who were opposed to separate State joined the ‘Jai Telangana’ chorus.
He lamented it was unfortunate that farmers did not find solutions to their problems even in the diamond jubilee year of independent India.
In this context, he suggested a peaceful agitation through Parliamentary means to achieve their goals. There were never instances in the past when agitations that did not touch the legislatures succeeded. Like people of Telangana were asked to express their demand for a State through the medium of vote in elections, he said people should be sensitised to vote for farmers for election to legislatures.
The president of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) He appealed to farmer leaders to enter politics and get elected to statutory bodies to take up issues of agriculture. Depending on circumstances, they could take up specific issues to highlight in legislatures.
The meeting took up a lengthy discussion on Central government’s faulty agricultural policies which resulted in the collapse of farming sector. The participants said the pro-farmer programmes of Telangana like Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima and free power to agriculture rattled the Centre.
It was felt that the Centre acted irresponsibly and conspired to destroy agriculture with a view to handover the sector to corporates.
He asked the farmer leaders to get back to their villages, take feedback on the discussions here from farmers and meet here again in a few days. After hearing the demands of farmers across the country, a meeting with scientists, economists, intellectuals and journalists could be planned to prepare the blueprint for the united struggles at national level.
