In a conciliatory gesture, the Centre on Wednesday agreed to roll back two a lot-required farm sector reforms. Both may perhaps be minor only relative to the 3 legislations which have now triggered the prosperous Punjab farmers to picket the highways major into the national capital but their significance to a clean atmosphere and an equitable price-sharing for electrical energy consumption can’t be minimised.
Stubble-burning in agricultural fields about Diwali just about every year is the primary bring about for unsafe levels of air pollution in the capital and the nearby regions. In preparing the fields for wheat sowing, farmers invariably burn paddy husk, contributing substantially to the currently polluted air in the area due to the seasonal modify of climate and numerous other things.
Since the State and Central governments had devised a scheme of incentives for placing the identical stubble to productive utilizes, the ban on stubble-burning was an clear subsequent step. But the farmers’ unions on Wednesday succeeded in obtaining the government to drop the penal provisions, which prescribed monetary fines and prison terms for these defying the ban. Now, the national capital can brace itself for a larger blanket of dark sooty air at the outset of subsequent winter as a outcome. This, then, is what the supporters of the farm stir had really wished for. Surrender to unreason and to retrograde farm practices is at the core of the farm unions’ demands.
The other concession on Wednesday concerned the proposed amendment in the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020. It, amongst other factors, sought to transfer subsidy straight to the targeted shoppers rather than route it by way of state electrical energy boards. The objective was to increase the monetary state of the electrical energy boards, which are perennially below massive debts due to higher expenses of production and distribution of energy and the provision of limitless cost-free energy to the farm sector. This is a recipe for bankruptcy of state electrical energy boards. Besides, paying shoppers are created to bear the burden of cost-free energy. Suspecting that the proposed amendment would lead to an improve in energy tariffs, the farmers’ unions forced the government to abandon the move. Yet, the farmers insisted that the core demand for the repeal of the 3 reform measures was non-negotiable.
The subsequent round of talks, scheduled for January 4, is set to take up the demand for the scrapping of the legislations. Given their intransigence in the face of universally endorsed progressive measures aimed at their personal welfare, we are saddened by the conduct of the so-referred to as liberal-leftist components. Instead of employing their influence to make them see cause, they are really egging the farmers on, on the path of confrontation. We can fully grasp the opposition parties playing a unfavorable function, but why other self-avowedly independent observers really should do so is most worrying. Are they as well so blinded by the hatred of Narendra Modi that they have jettisoned wider national interests, which cries out for a lengthy overdue reform of the farm sector.
Meanwhile, the attack and vandalism in Punjab against the mobile towers of Reliance Jio has blown into a law and order situation. Having instigated the anti-Centre protests, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh now finds it challenging to include the lawlessness by friendly farmers, who are stated to have broken some 1,600 Jio mobile towers. In addition, according to Reliance, their retail outlets and petrol pumps as well had been vandalised.
The attacks are clearly a handiwork of these who have fallen prey to the false propaganda that the objective of reforms was to assist ‘Ambani and Adani’ to take more than their farm lands. Extensive harm to telecom towers of Reliance Jio has disrupted its services in massive components of Punjab. Belatedly, the state government has ordered the police to take stern action against these damaging the critical infrastructure but the silence of the Opposition leaders, who are fuelling anti-company sentiment for their personal selfish interests, is ominous. Socio-financial progress is held hostage to partisan interests of a handful of frustrated opposition leaders. They ought to be isolated additional.