Protesting TN farmers drink urine over drought relief funds and loan waiver
New Delhi: Grabbing eyeballs with their novel way of protest, Tamil Nadu farmers on Saturday drank urine in another desperate bid to draw the government’s attention towards their plight.
Over the last 39 days, they have shaved half of their moustache and head, kept mice and snakes in their mouth, conducted mock funerals, flogged themselves and carried skulls of other farmers, who had committed suicide due to debt pressure.
The farmers, whose protest entered the 40th day on Saturday, drank urine even as police tried to stop them. They have been demanding a loan waiver, a revised drought relief package and better support prices for their produce.
P. Ayyakkannu, who is leading the protest, said, “The Union government is not giving us water. So we are consuming urine.”
The protesters had on Friday said they would drink urine if the Centre failed to offer a solution to their problems within a day. On April 10, they had stripped in front of the Prime Minister’s Office here to press for their demands.
Meanwhile, in Chennai DMK working president MK Stalin urged the farmers from Tamil Nadu staging a protest in Delhi to defer their agitation and take part in the April 25 bandh called by the Opposition parties.
“They (the farmers protesting in Delhi) should take part in the bandh and support the other steps we are to going to take on behalf of all the political parties,” he said.
Speaking to reporters after holding a meeting of leaders of various political parties, including the Congress, to discuss the agenda of the proposed bandh, Stalin said a resolution has been adopted urging the farmers to postpone their protest in Delhi. On April 16, it was decided at a meeting of political parties, chaired by Stalin, to observe a state-wide bandh on April 25. The Congress, the CPM, the CPI, the VCK, the MMK and the IUML are among the parties that have pledged support to the bandh.
Stalin said employees in the transport sector, traders and members of the film fraternity were among those who had pledged their support to the proposed shutdown.
The Leader of Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly said efforts to get the protesting farmers in Delhi an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi had yielded no result so far.
