What does the Prime Minister of the world’s most populous democracy do when his farmers are agitating at his doorstep? If he is Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, he reaches out to them, with a mega media and ministerial outreach. Both to assuage concerns and promise restoration of specific wrongs. He invites them to negotiate on the basis of tark and tathya logic and facts not falsehoods and fabrications.
As the year draws to a close, a coalition of nearly 50 farmers’ unions, backed openly or covertly by opposition parties, have laid siege to India’s national capital region around Delhi. Some 200,000 protesters, who include not only farmers, but also truckers, ex-servicemen, even some sports and media persons, want the government to roll back the three Agri bills passed in September 2020.
Protests an Opposition ploy, says PM Modi, signals no yield on demand for repeal
“Why do you adopt a dogali (doublespeak) policy? What kind of politics are they doing in which there is no logic, no facts? Make false accusations and spread rumours to scare our farmers. Sometimes, naive farmers get misled by you,” the Prime Minister said. Updated: December 26, 2020 8:17:09 am
Slamming the Opposition for what he called its “dogali” (doublespeak) policy over the new farm laws, Modi said the government is ready to hold talks in the interest of farmers, but it will be on “issues, logic and facts”.