Farmers Protest...Media Sleeps

As the nation and the media mourned the death of YSR Reddy, efforts to revive the Doha round of the stalled WTO talks began in New Delhi. Against the backdrop of the latter event (and inevitably the former too) around 45,000 Indian farmers raised slogans to stall efforts to liberalise agricultural trade.

The farmers, already hit by a major drought this year, fear further liberalisation in trade would mean a rush of foreign mechanized operations into agriculture that would in turn hurt their already meagre livelihoods. The Doha round of the WTO talks collapsed in July 2008; the current politicking in New Delhi among trade ministers from around 36 countries is designed to restart that round.

"I wonder why we live in the illusion of farmers being the silly ignorant country folks who land up in our cities by mistake! If our media gave you a chance you may really be struck by how much they know of what they do! And they may not know the hi fundas of the power politics at WTO more than me and you but if their livlihood is getting affected they surely would know the real pinch of it better!" - Pearl Sandhu (one of my friends)

IT WAS A SHAME THE INDIAN NATIONAL MEDIA COMPLETELY IGNORED THIS FARMERS' PROTEST.

Comments

crookedlinesSeptember 9, 2009 at 10:49 PM
The sense of defiance visible in these pictures only comes to the fore when someone is kicking you in the stomach. Under any other circumstances, these same people would've been crouching under the might of the 'system' but that isnt to be when you're telling them that they will have to live hand-to-mouth henceforth....There is both aggressive defiance and there is silent defiance....but the message is still the same ------- we will not watch silently as our daily breads are snatched away.
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