THE FARMERS, THE THREE ACTS AND THE WAY FORWARD

There are major reasons for the current situation of farmers; Lack of unity among them and selfishness of their leaders. Farmers 'and farm workers' unions, with the exception of a few, have been one of the major reasons for the denial of farmers and farm labourers rights because till date their mode has been agitation only based on the reactions to  government actions harming their interests whereas they should be actually be backed by research,study and data based  memorandum of demands for changes both in short and long terms policies.

As  farming is one activity which brings together many agencies together having inter dependency  therefore they  need advise and focus from many fields . But  so far the farmer unions have not been able to move in this direction at all and largely their agendas  have been narrow ended barring the present agitation for which they have received support from large sections of society especially youth. 

Now they need to focus in their new agenda of demands under which the percieved harm from the three farm acts is removed and new alternatives which ensure farmer friendly policies are proposed and accepted by the government at the center.

 And from the state governments which claims to be farmer friendly they need to put up and get addressed the following atleast immediately.

 So far the unions have not done anything  to get a Debt Readdressal Forum for the debt ridden farmers especially Arhatiya Debt - despite this being the leading cause of agricultural suicides.

To date, no farmer organization has demanded a just Debt settlement system based on the Sir Chhotu Ram Acts of 1930 and 1934.

No Kisan Union has ever called for compensation for electricity to 1.5 to 2 lakh small and marginal farmers nor has it ever made any demand for farmers who do not have electricity connection or do not have the financial situation to take it. (Although offered by PSPCL under the Tatkal scheme which costed around ₹2.25 lac) and are forced to run diesel pump sets or buy water from a farmer who gets free electricity.

Now coming to the charter of demands  till date  there has been little contact and connect between the agricultural unions and the Punjab agricultural economists both retired and serving in various universities. Few reasons are that most of them are not considered  farmer friendly, table bound researchers, not connected to ground and are seen by the farmers as a mouth pieces of the government or of the university management.

On the other hand the belief of agricultural economists about farm unions  is that they don't listen to them, don't follow diversification, follow wheat paddy cycle despite  crisis of water for irrigation as a resource, take unviable farm loans and then  splurge these on luxuries and marriages, buying tractors and fitting them with expensive music systems when actually they could bought a low hp tractor or could have hired one as per their land holding or acreage they till.

Economists also believe that most Kisan Union leader leaving aside a few have actually been trying to find a secure future for themselves or their wards being part of ruling alliances of all colours and hue.

 The Reality

Farmers actually  need to have a very solid backing from an honest think tank of Agriculture economists, legal luminaries, experienced farm scientists to advise ,guide and be part of the negotiations when cleverest of bureaucracy talks on government behalf

 Now coming to the government- the democratic majority will continue to be misused if it suits the policy of any particular ruling party.

 But despite this   It's not all over for farmers so what  are the solution for all their problems?

WHY THERE IS A REQUIREMENT OF NON RUSTING BARRIERS ON WATER WAYS ?

 The debate is raging on the industry and municipalities polluting the river waters. There are numerous other sources of pollution of these canals and waterways which have been silently polluting since the advent of canal systems. And for these water resources to remain free from pollution is very important because these are major water sources of drinking as well as for agriculture. In about two years from now three major cities of Ludhiana, Amritsar and Patiala will start receiving surface drinking water from the various canals adjacent to them as part of World and Asian Development Bank projects. The major sources of their pollution are raw sewerage, solid waste, household garbage, untreated industrial wastage, animal carcasses, human sourced religious waste,plastic waste, and human bodies.

The major issue here is for adopting the non rusting barriers is of stopping the flow off human corpses and animal carcasses to tail end distributaries. The macro focus is on to stop the human corpses being carried away by water current which enter these waters by default or otherwise. To further clarify the bodies might have been moved from the actual locations or the area of crimes by criminals. Persons inadvertently falling into canals while bathing etc or persons committing suicides .

The non rusting barriers should be installed to stop the human corpses being swept away by water current as well as when pushed away by persons deployed by various police station in charges beyond their areas of jurisdiction so that they don’t have to take possession of the body and do necessary documentation and actions required when a human body is found.

 

To go into little micro details the human bodies come into canals/waterways due to the following plausible causes

a)A person commits suicides.

b)A person accidentally falls into the canal.

c)A person’s vehicle falls into the canal and the bodies get swept away.

d)A person is murdered and immediately his body is disposed off in the canal.

e)A person is murdered somewhere else at a distance and then brought from the scene of crime and disposed of in the canal/waterway to avoid detection and motive of crime as well as type of method used to kill.

The non rusting barriers will result in the following benefits

a)The persons parents/dependents/relatives will be able to trace the body earliest and do the last rites.

b)The police will be able to record the scene of crime adjacent or upstream of the barrier rather than when it crosses half of Punjab or many police and many district boundaries.

c)The body will still carry marks of injuries if there, viscera will be examineable as compared to now when the unclaimed bodies are cremated by socially helpful NGO’s as unclaimed bodies whose identities are established with help of photos , clothes and belongings much later. 

d)This will help police establishing the type of death by drowning or other means before drowning. 

e)As the postmortems are the only means to establish the circumstances leading to death can be conducted on these bodies which are intact and available in a better shape as compared to totally putrefied or ashes form which actually help the criminals get away when the crimes go undetected as bodies postmortem does not happen as they are cremated as unclaimed bodies by social organizations.

f)It will also help in establishing the identity of the body because further the body goes/travels by water from the area where the person resided it becomes difficult for all concerned to establish the identity of the person.

g)It will give a major psychological satisfaction to parents/dependents of the deceased when they are able to receive a body and cremate it rather than receive an urn of ashes from a social body who cremated the unclaimed body as a social responsibility.

h)It will reduce the cases of blind murders, missing persons, unsolved cases of disappearance and cross district/state crimes.

I)It will help in making police more accountable to the crimes being committed in its area of responsibility and thus painting reasonable picture of their efficiency as well as effectiveness.

J)The barriers will help in also arresting the animal carcasses which putrefy to become micro pieces and thus cause the pollution leading to a number of hazardous diseases in the persons consuming the polluted drinking water.