A Food Strike, Not Hunger

Post-UP loan waiver, Maharashtra farmers demand their due, and are refusing to budge until they get it

- Prachi Pinglay-Plumber

Following the call for strike by farmers, who also called for blocking the supply of milk and vegetables to Mumbai, the past one week has been hectic for everyone in Maharashtra—for political parties, activists, the state government, retailers, citizens and, especially, protesting farmers.

Since June 1, different market places across Maharashtra remained closed for wholesale transactions for vegetables. On the first day of clashes between protesters and the police, one person lost his life due to a cardiac arrest.

In the neighbouring BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh, the situation has become much worse. At least five farmers were killed in the violent protests over similar demands from the farmers. Though the trigger for these agitations could lie in the election-sop of loan waiver in Uttar Pradesh, there is little doubt about the worsening situation of farmers after last year’s satisfactory monsoon, the consequent bumper crop and the crashing of prices. The suicide figure of 852 in Maharashtra in the first four months of 2017 is a clear, shocking indication of this.

In Maharashtra, parts of Nashik, from where most of the vegetable supply comes, remain tense. The Mumbai APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) started getting its vegetables from other states and milk supply is coming into the city with police protection. At Puntamba, in Ahmednagar district, where the agitation originated, a decision to start supply of vegetables from June 8 showed the inevitability of an exercise such as this.