Why No National Policy to Compensate Farmers?

It is time now to take some tangible steps and stop doing only lip service. 

- Sanjeev Sirohi

Come to think of it, even after 70 years of Independence, we still don’t have any national policy to compensate farmers who form the backbone of Indian economy. No country can ever progress where farmers are neglected.

It is really most astonishing that there is no national policy in our country to compensate farmers who toil so hard relentlessly throughout their life and this despite the unpalatable truth that so many farmers commit suicide every year in different parts of our country.

Having dealt with the issue of farmers’ suicide raised in many PILs earlier, the Supreme Court on 27 January, found it very strange that there was no national policy to compensate tillers for crop failure or indebtedness which are the two major reasons for them to take their own precious lives.

No doubt, these are issues of national importance and of larger public interest which we can dare to ignore only at the cost of our own peril! It is really a million-dollar question as to why there is no national policy in place for compensating farmers!

Let me inform here that a bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar and Justice NV Ramana was dealing with a three-year-old appeal filed by an NGO led by Mallika Sarabhai questioning the rationale behind Gujarat High Court’s decision not to entertain its PIL seeking relief for farmers, nearly 600 of whom had committed suicide between 2004-2012.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Colin Gonsalves who represented the NGO submitted before the top court that he now wanted the scope of the petition to be broadened and that he has adduced statistics relating to farmers’ suicides from across the country.