Farmers who end their lives are cowards, says minister

Congress MP Amarinder Singh visits the family of Joginder Singh, a septuagenarian farmer who died during a farmers’ protest at Devidaspura near Amritsar, yesterday.Agencies/New DelhiHaryana Agriculture Minister Om Prakash Dhankar, who heads the farmers’ wing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has drawn flak from the opposition for branding as “cowards” some farmers who committed suicide after unseasonal rains destroyed their crops. Dozens of poverty-stricken, debt-laden farmers have killed themselves in the past two months after heavy downpours flattened rice, wheat and potato crops. In many rural areas, discontent with government policies is turning to anger against Modi as he completes a year in office. Tuesday’s comments by the minister of Haryana, one of India’s northern breadbasket states, could further alienate those in the countryside, where the opposition Congress Party is trying to broaden its appeal to voters. “Any farmer committing suicide is running away from his responsibilities, leaving behind his burden on his innocent wife and children,” Dhankar, who is also chief of the farmers’ wing of the BJP, told reporters in images aired by national media yesterday. “Such people are cowards. No government can stand by them.” In parliament yesterday, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi pulled up the government for Dhankar’s remarks, urging Modi to visit farms and acquaint himself with conditions there. “The farmers are crying, they are in distress, but Dhankar says those who commit suicide are cowards,” said Gandhi, who recently returned from a mysterious eight-week foreign break. “It would be good if the prime minister goes to Punjab, meets farmers and goes to the wholesale markets,” Gandhi added, in a reference to India’s top wheat producing state. “He will get to know for himself what’s happening.” Gandhi attacked Modi on his frequent foreign trips and said farmers producing grain were also part of the ‘Make in India’.“The government says there should be ‘Make in India’... It is our government, your government, but not farmers’ government,” he said.The attack resulted in a ruckus in the lower house, with members of the ruling alliance protesting the comments.Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal countered Gandhi saying that though the Congress vice president has visited Punjab, he was yet to visit his own constituency.“I would like to ask him when the farmers were suffering inclement weather, including hail storms, where was he then?”“Some people have come back and to reinvent themselves they are playing a drama here. They should do so in Amethi (Gandhi’s constituency),” she said.Federal minister Ram Vilas Paswan, responding to the Congress leader, said: “We are doing the work which you didn’t do for the nation.”After Gandhi’s speech, Dhankar told reporters he stood by his comment that committing suicide is a crime under Indian law, but added his government had given farmers every assistance. Experts say suicide is common among poor Indian farmers who borrow money at exorbitant rates, staking everything on the outcome of a single crop, with no farm insurance.  lGandhi will undertake a ‘padyatra’ (march) in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region to meet farmers today.Scheduled to start at 7.45am from Gunj village, approximately 50km from Amravati district town, Gandhi will embark on a 15km march to meet farmers and their families, party spokesman Vijay Inder Singla said.Another party official said the purpose of the padyatra was to visit farmers in the region where many have committed suicide due to mounting debts.Gandhi will be accompanied by Maharashtra Congress president Ashok Chavan and Congress Legislature Party leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil as also other leaders.