A field day for Rakesh Tikait

His nonchalance whereas addressing the media and negotiating with officers is noteworthy. Rakesh Tikait saunters beneath the Delhi-Meerut flyover on NH 9 like he’s strolling in his fields in Sisauli village in Muzaffarnagar. The nationwide spokesperson of Bhartiya Kisan Union is among the many farmer leaders taking part within the ongoing negotiations with the federal government. He is the youthful son of Mahendra Singh Tikait, who as soon as made the BKU the voice of farmers in north India. Today, it has been fragmented into 50 odd factions with the Tikait group holding on to its affect on farmers in west U.P.

Well-informed

Well-informed concerning the calls for of the digital media, he retains shifting on tractors to offer bytes to newspersons. And when the Ghaziabad officers arrive to barter, he educates them on the place Delhi ends and Uttar Pradesh begins. He tells the Additional District Magistrate to get the partitions of the flyover painted as Kisan Kranti Gate-2018 within the reminiscence of the conflict between the BKU farmers and the police in October 2018 on the web site.

Many see him near senior BJP chief Rajnath Singh. When one asks whether or not he was disenchanted that Mr. Singh was lacking from the federal government panel, Mr. Tikait nods.

‘Long struggle’

“It’s the government’s decision. He might join at a later stage. Abhi to lamba chalega (It will go on for a long time),” he predicts. He rapidly clarifies that the BKU was not talking for the federal government. Many of us may need voted for the BJP within the elections however they haven’t lived as much as the promise made to the farmers,” he says.“It seems the government is paving the way for agro-industries and is looking at farmers as labour. We are staring at the privatisation of agriculture,” he says. “The government is trampling on what is essentially a State subject. When we talk of writing minimum support price in the law, we are told MSP is a separate issue.”

‘Vast difference’

He says when the PM talks about one nation, one market he ought to know that the inputs prices of farmers in numerous States are completely different. “There is a vast difference in electricity rates in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, both ruled by the BJP.”

He maintains there’s coordination between completely different teams. “If somebody goes out of the movement of farmers of the country, it won’t be acceptable to farmers who are now coming out in large numbers.”

On the sluggish mobilisation in western U.P. compared to Haryana and Punjab, Mr. Tikait says, the tractors are nonetheless busy unloading sugarcane on the mills. “In Haryana and Punjab, farmers are comparatively freer during this period as paddy has been harvested and the wheat is sown. Also, the lack of rail transport has resulted in slow mobilisation.” says the BKU chief.

On the funding of the protest and the rise within the variety of SUVs on the protest web site, Mr. Tikait causes they’re of those that have agriculture because the secondary supply of earnings. “Those who are wholly dependent on agriculture could only have two square meals a day,” he says.

‘Funding the protests’

Interestingly, he provides, the farmers are funding the protests themselves. “They are coming on their own, paying for their travel. That’s why you can sense a feeling of pride and freedom in them. It is not like political parties where they see it like a chore,” says Mr. Tikait.

As one rises to go away, a fogging machine arrives from one facet of the U.P. Gate, and from the opposite, a Samajwadi Party employee comes with meals packets. In between, Mr. Tikait is telling the officers the precise level the place he needs the graffiti. “If you find it difficult, tell the electricity department to send a crane to fix a light. We will get hold of the crane to spray paint the graffiti.”