Don’t bulldoze tillers

Saturday 3rd July, 2021

The government has, in its wisdom, chosen to fight on several fronts simultaneously while putting up resistance against an elusive yet formidable enemy—coronavirus. It provoked the public sector nurses into resorting to trade union action. The same is true of the ongoing farmers’ protests against the Agriculture Ministry’s failure to make fertiliser available for the current cultivation season. These agitations have become a daily occurrence. Cultivators are seen protesting on fields and roads. The government continues to ignore their demands, insisting that their allegations are baseless.

The government cannot wish the fertiliser shortage away. Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has sought to play down the issue by claiming that the Opposition has made a mountain out of a molehill; he is apparently doing it the other way around. He seems to believe in his own mistruths and act accordingly. He cannot be unaware that not all farmers taking part in protests are Opposition supporters, and that they would not have taken to the streets, exposing themselves to the Delta variant of coronavirus but for their sheer desperation to save their cultivations affected by the fertiliser shortage.

The Opposition, no doubt, is trying to gain some political traction from the farmers’ protests. It may be dreaming that the ongoing agitations will spin out of control and lead to something like the farmers’ struggle in India. Hope is said to spring eternal. But what really drives the farmers to protest is not a political motive but the losses they are suffering. They have families to feed and clothe, and debts to repay; their crops are obviously dying for want of fertiliser. They have already suffered heavy losses due to lockdowns, which caused their produce to perish on their fields. If the government listens to the protesting farmers and takes action to redress their grievances, they will give up their agitations and go back to their fields, and the Opposition will have to find some other issue to flog.

The government ought to realise that it needs farmers’ cooperation more than anything else if it is to steer its organic fertiliser project to success. Antagonising the farming community is certainly not the way to set about the task. Even the JVP, whose leaders are seen at farmers’ protests, insists that it is not against the government policy of promoting organic fertiliser. The outfit may be blamed for anything but a conspiracy to derail the government’s fertiliser project. It says it is only asking the government to meet the fertiliser needs of the farmers in the short run and effect the switchover to organic fertiliser gradually. This sounds a sensible suggestion that the government should take on board. Extreme actions must be avoided. The SLFP-led United Front government (1970-77) took its agricultural experiments to an extreme, and the political price it had to pay for its obduracy and arrogance was huge. If it had acted sensibly without causing so much of suffering to the public, it would not have suffered a humiliating defeat in 1977, when the UNP secured a five-sixths majority in Parliament and abused it in every conceivable manner to suppress democracy for 17 years.

The country needs mass protests or gatherings like a hole in the head at this particular juncture. The country’s fight against Covid-19 has become an uphill task owing to the costly blunders of the government and the noncooperation of the public. Protests will only make an already bad situation worse. They are super-spreader events although the organisers thereof claim that the protesters fully comply with the Covid-19 prevention protocol.

The government ought to be flexible in handling farmers’ protests and guided by the oxymoronic aphorism, festina lente or ‘make haste slowly’, in carrying out its fertiliser experiments. Its ill-conceived attempts to bulldoze its way through will only cause unnecessary problems for the country.