Farmers protest follows PM to the US; Biden-tagged tweet could stump Modi
Farmers leader Rakesh Tikait takes farmers protest fight to Biden’s door just ahead of Modi’s meeting with leaders
Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all geared up to be part of an all-important meeting in the United States, he sure has quite some serious reasons to frown. On his visit to the US after a very long time, the Prime Minister cannot indeed rest assured that everything on the home front is hale and hearty.
For, the farmers who have been at loggerheads with the Modi administration for a long time now, are not ready to budge. They have even found additional ways to be heard, and that too on an international platform!
Though the PM had travelled westward for deliberations on important matters that concern the region as a whole, the farmers in the country are not ready to give up their fight. For, they can only fight and continue to fight to re-establish their rights. They have in fact gone to the extent of taking their fight to the doorstep of Modi’s host – who else, but Joe Biden, the US President!
The farmers in India, who have been agitating in farmers protest against the three new farm laws imposed upon them, have now knocked at Biden’s well-guarded door with a tweet. Going by what Twitter tells us, farmers’ leader Rakesh Tikait has shot off a tweet to US President Joe Biden. And what did he tweet, you wonder? Tikait has called for the POTUS’s intervention in getting the Indian administration to dump the legislation that causes the agriculture sector in India much trouble.
President Biden urged to focus on farmers concern while meeting Modi
The tweet by Rakesh Tikait read, “Dear @POTUS, we the Indian Farmers are protesting against 3 farm laws brought by PM Modi’s govt. 700 farmers have died in the last 11 months protesting. These black laws should be repealed to save us. Please focus on our concerns while meeting PM Modi. #Biden_SpeakUp4Farmers.”
It wasn’t a tweet just for the sake of it, in case you thought so. Tikait, the leader of the Indian farmers’ union or the Bharatiya Kisan Union, who has been a prominent face in the farmers’ fight for justice, tagged @POTUS, the Twitter handle of the US President, hoping that at least Biden would breathe some sense into Narendra Modi and put a halt on the anti-farmer legislation his government has adopted. Even interesting is the fact that Tikait hashtagged his tweet “Biden_SpeakUp4Farmers. The tweet, incidentally, is trending galore on Twitter as of now.
Significant is the fact that Tikait’s tweet came just hours ahead of Modi’s all-important meeting scheduled between the leaders of the US and India. The Indian Prime Minister is meeting the leaders of the QUAD members, the United States, Japan, Australia and India.
Farmers on the warpath since a year against new laws
Three laws were enacted exactly a year ago in a bid to what the government termed ‘liberalising domestic agricultural trade’. Soon after the laws came about, farmers numbering thousands began their protest against the laws. The agitation still continues, and the Modi administration has turned a deaf ear to all the noise made out there on the streets by the farming community.
The farmers believe and fear that the new legislation would force them to be at the mercy of mega-corporations who will now have the right to dictate prices and take them off state support. The protests that began a year ago has now assumed a much larger canvas and has turned into a big movement against the ruling BJO’s ‘flawed’ economic policies.
With the government sweeping away all the critical noises under the carpet, the farmers have been left with no other go than to make the international community listen in too. The Prime Minister’s US visit and the high-profile meetings scheduled in the US seemed like a great occasion for the agitating farmers to make their voices heard. Tikait’s tweet could just be the beginning of a major storm.
