While sundry activists are trying to bounce back to relevance by supporting the misguided farmers’ agitation, the Congress leadership seems to be attempting party revival by doing the same. So, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have begun the ‘Speak Up for Farmers’ campaign.
“The Modi government tortured farmers. First, they enacted black laws and then used force and then lathi-charged them. But they forgot that when farmers raise their voice, then it resonates across the country. Join us through the #SpeakUpForFarmers campaign against the exploitation of our brother and sister farmers,” Rahul tweet in Hindi.
“The name is farmer’s law but all the benefits go to the billionaire friends. How can farmer laws be formulated without talking to farmers? How can their interests be ignored while making these laws? The government will have to listen to the farmers. Let us support farmers. #SpeakUpForFarmers,” Priyanka tweeted in Hindi.
In a political arena where myths assume the verisimilitude of reality and dubious doctrines pass off as gospel truths, political statements can be made without any regards to facts. Hence the “government tortured farmers.”
It is axiomatic that farmers, who are some of the holy cows of Indian politics, have been treated with kid gloves ever since they started protesting against the new farm laws—which, by the way, emancipate and empower them, as we have mentioned several times. PTI, quoting sources, reported on November 16 that Indian Railways suffered a loss of Rs 1,670 crore in freight earnings alone due to the farmers’ agitation in Punjab that had continued for over 50 days, resulting in the cancellation of 1,986 passenger services and 3,090 goods trains to the region.
<strong>Read also: <a href="https://indianarrative.com/opinion/professional-revolutionaries-like-yogendra-yadav-medha-patkar-fuel-farm-stir-31554.html">Professional revolutionaries like Yogendra Yadav, Medha Patkar fuel farm stir</a></strong>
The loss to the economy in general and the inconvenience to people when thousands of trains are cancelled can be easily imagined. Yet, there were no reports of any farmer being tortured.
<strong>Read also: <a href="https://indianarrative.com/opinion/foreign-protests-over-farm-acts-much-ado-over-nothing-26955.html">Foreign protests over Farm Acts: Much ado over nothing</a></strong>
Even in the last few days, the police used force only in response to the violence and vandalism perpetrated by some of the agitators. Yet, the scions of the family that matters in the GOP have no compunctions of making outlandish claims about the repression the agitating farmers have been subjected.
Comment is free but facts are sacred—this is what we believed for long. But in contemporary politics, facts are free, while comment is defined by party interests. Tweets by Rahul and Priyanka are testimony to this distressing reality..
