Farmers in India’s Doaba region, under the banner of Bharti Kissan Union (BKU), dumped their potato produce on the roads of Kartarpur Tuesday, causing a traffic jam on the Jalandhar-Amritsar national highway.
Harmeet Singh Kadian, BKU state president, said, “We disposed of around 500 quintal (50,000 kilograms) of potato at the main chowk (marketplace) in Kartarpur. Around 10 tractor-trailers and five pickups were used for it.”
Kadian said potato farmers held a meeting at the vegetable market in Kartarpur in the morning under the leadership of Puran Singh Shahkot. They decided to dump the potatoes on the roads to protest the government’s “indifferent” attitude towards them, he said.
Kadian said the Punjab Government had asked Markfed and National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) to procure the potato crop, but they had failed to do so. He said due to the “indifferent” attitude of the government, farmers had been committing suicide.
He said the demonetization move of the Union Government had hit potato farmers badly. The farmers are unable to recover the input cost.
“It is not only the potato farmers that have suffered, but the farming community in general too has suffered a lot,” he said.
Source: The Tribune
