On Monday, the Indian police barricaded roads to prevent farmers who were stomping to New Delhi to protest for better crop prices which had been promised to them in 2021.
A few government ministers are expected to meet up with farm union leaders on Monday to avoid a repeat of the year-long protest, which was directed at forcing the government to reverse the farm laws conceived to deregulate vast agricultural markets.
The march is coming a few months before the national elections in India, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely expected to clinch a third term.
The millions of farmers in India are a a huge influential voting bloc and the ruling parties try their best to keep growers on their side.
TV footage showed farmers in tractors, making their way towards Delhi from the northern Indian breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana, along with barriers which included barbed wire fencing and cement blocks were put up on the edges of the city to stop them.
The police authorities had also issued orders banning public gatherings in Delhi.
When Modi’s administration repealed the farm laws after the farmers protest in 2021, the government remarked that it would institute a panel of growers and government officials to look for ways to ensure support prices for all farm.
