By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: The All India Catholic Union (AICU) has reaffirmed solidarity with the country’s farmers and workers.
The 101-year-old Asia’s biggest laity movement has many farmers and workers as members.
“We therefore are naturally in solidarity with people of all faiths who are farmers, fishermen and workers in factories. We know and understand how much labor and sweat of the farmer goes into producing food for the country, and cash crops for export,” AICU national president Lancy D’Cunha said in a week-end national podcast.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers have been staying at the Delhi borders since November 26 demanding the repeal of three recently passed farm laws.
A statement from the union noted the love the farmer has for the land, the animals he breeds, and the environment where he labors. “This cannot be measured in terms of just money,” added the January 31 statement released by AICU spokesperson John Dayal.
“We also know that in Europe and many other countries, the governments honor this labor of the farmer. Governments therefore give huge subsidies to their farmers,” the statement points out.
The situation in India, it further says, varies from state to state, and farmers are under great stress. If there is a drought, or a hailstorm or a flood, the entire labor is lost.
The statement also says that in the past ten years, more than 350,000 farmers have committed suicide because they could not repay their loans and the stress became too much.
“We therefore stand in total solidarity with the farmers who are now agitating at the gates of the national capital, New Delhi. The farmers have been in the struggle to save agriculture and thus save India from disaster,” the AICU president said.
The farmers are demanding the repeal of the three agriculture laws that the government has recently enacted without any consultation and without following parliamentary procedures.
“These agriculture laws, and the proposed electricity amendments, are detrimental to all people,” D’Cunha asserted.
Introducing the podcast, Dayal said, “The government has adopted an inhuman attitude towards the agitating farmers who are sitting outside the national capital in biting cold and rainy weather. The new laws be taken back immediately.”