NL Hafta

“I have not seen a liar Chief Minister like him [Shivraj Singh Chouhan] in my entire lifetime,” Shiv Kumar Sharma said. The farmer leader has reason to be upset and angry at the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister: The Chouhan government, he said, has made hundreds of announcements in the past but never implemented it. Sharma is the 66-year-old who has led the farmers’ protest in Madhya Pradesh, which turned violent. Also known as Kakkaji in MP, Sharma called Chouhan a “darpok (coward)” CM. The chief of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh (RKMS), Sharma charged that the Shivraj government has failed to address the agrarian crisis in the state over the last 14 years. And as a result, “due to this building pressure on farmers, the cooker had burst.” On his radar are both the BJP government and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s farmer body Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS). According to Sharma, the BKS struck a deal with the state government and unanimously called off the protest. By doing so, they have cheated the farming community, he said. Sharma himself was once the BKS chief and was thrown out of the organisation, when in 2010, he spearheaded the farmers’ agitation in December 2010 against the “own” BJP government and gheraoed Bhopal with tractors. “I was thrown out of BKS when we gheraoed Bhopal with tractors during our agitation- Operation 10.12 in 2010. I was immediately arrested and sent to jail. ” His associates told Newslaundry that in a career of 40 years, Sharma has gone to jail 44 times for the raising the farmers’ cause. Sharma rejects claims that farmers turned violent during the protest which took over Madhya Pradesh for the last 15 days. According to him, this was a strategy of the state government to provoke agitators and discredit them once it turned violent. The farmers of Malwa region in Madhya Pradesh began protesting against the BJP-led government on June 1. A higher minimum support price for their crops and loan waivers were amongst their 20 demands. However, on June 6, six farmers were shot dead in the police farming. Meanwhile, CM Chouhan who sat on an “indefinite” hunger strike broke his fast on the very second day. Sharma has called Chauhan’s fasts a “nautanki (drama)”. While the RKMS is not satisfied with the announcements made by the Chouhan government, they said the protest will continue. It has identified national highways across the country which will be blocked for three hours on June 16. On June 23, the RKMS is planning to hold protests by doing the shavasana - where farmers will lie like dead bodies in front of posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. June 21 is the International Day of Yoga. This 66-year-old farmer leader from Hoshangabad district debunks the arguments that loan waivers for farmers will hurt taxpayers. “It is the farmers of this country who give subsidy to entire nation,” Sharma told Newslaundry. “Farmers’ get 30-40 per cent less than the minimum support price… The moong dal which costs Rs 5,500 is bought at Rs 2,500, we get 85 paise per kg of potato,” said Sharma. On June 13, the RKMS filed a complaint with the National Human Rights’ Commission (NHRC) accusing CM Chouhan for the killings of farmers on June 6. For Sharma, Chouhan is a “hatyara (murderer) Chief Minister.”