Farmers Protest Legal Charges, Debt Woes Amid Crop Diversification Push

While the Indian Union government has called for talks with farmers over legal guarantee Minimum Support Price (MSP) demand on 14 Feb, the Ferozeput District Court has ordered the police to arrest all the ‘accused’ in the January 2022 Prime Minister security breach case on 14 Feb. In the breach, PM Narendra Modi’s convoy was halted for 20-minutes on a flyover in Panjab. Farmer union leaders have announced plans to intensify their agitation against the ‘attempt-to-murder’ charges filed in the case. On 11 Feb, thousands of farmers from Panjab and Haryana gathered near Ferozepur’s Senior Superintendent of Police office, demanding that Section 307 of the First Information Report be withdrawn. The farmers say the charges are baseless, pointing out that Bharatiya Janata Party supporters, rather than the protestors, approached the PM’s convoy. In a separate development, data provided by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to the Lok Sabha (Lower House) reveal that 8.5M farmers in Panjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh collectively owe about USD 25B to commercial, cooperative, and regional rural banks. Panjab farmers bear the heaviest debt load at USD 11.9B. Agricultural activists blame this ballooning liability on systemic issues such as over-reliance on wheat and paddy, and the absence of robust price support for alternative crops. Hoping to address such concerns, Finance Minister Sitharaman’s budget also earmarked USD 114M for a six-year Pulse Mission, aimed at producing more tur, urad, and masoor pulses through assured procurement by central agencies like National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India and National Co-operative Consumers' Federation of India. Experts note that encouraging farmers to grow pulses could help reduce Panjab’s 3.2M hectares under rice and 3.5M hectares under wheat, thereby alleviating groundwater depletion and meeting the demand for an expanded MSP.