National Fish workers Forum has threatened to go for a Samundhar Bandh if the government did not pay attention to farmers' demand.
Joining the call given by farmers to repeal the newly enacted farm laws, Narendra R. Patil, Chairperson of NFF demanded the government to withdraw the new farm laws. The Forum also called upon all fish workers unions in the coast to join the struggle with farmers.
Narendra R Patil in a statement said that lakhs of fish workers have joined the Bharat Bandh call as part of the ongoing farmers’ protests for repealing the farm laws – The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.
“These laws had been unilaterally thrust upon the farming community as ordinances amid the lockdown,” he stated, adding that the “NFF firmly believes these laws are anti-farmer in nature and spirit and will effectively support the corporates in the form of Agribusiness to loot our natural resources even further and increase the corporate’s margin of profits,” Patil said.
According to the NFF, this “essentially also leads to furthering landlessness within the peasant community leading to further displacement and unprecedented migration uprooting the peasants from their traditional livelihood.”
The NFF told that it has been noted that “there is a systematic attack on the federal structure and autonomy by displacing the local markets by allowing corporates to enter the terrain and making the farming community more vulnerable by making them dependent and at the mercy of the corporates.”
They have always flagged this “ambition of making each and everything under ‘One’ ness” as a “worrying trend” even for the farming community and the farmers on land as this “does not accept the aspirations of the natural resource-based communities be it the farmers or fish workers or the working class at large. The promise of doubling the income of farmers by 2022 is not only going to be a dream but also will see the dismantling of the agricultural economy in total and is going to see the marginalisation and invisibilisation of several actors be it the women, the landless, the small farmers, fish workers from the spectrum of the sector.”
The forum condemned “the violent and inhumane usage of tear-gas and water cannons upon the protesting farmers in Delhi especially when it is extremely cold” and demanded that “Government of India withdraw the new farm laws and listen to the farmer's demands and act upon it with immediate effect.”
If the demands are not met by the Government, the NFF has urged “all the trade unions of the fish workers in the coast to come together and join the struggle in Delhi as well as announce the Samundhar Bandh as this is a united fight.”
