MSP, WTO & Farm Debt: Sukhwinder Kaur of BKU (Krantikari) breaks down why farmers are protesting

In this interview by The Polis Project reporter Prashant Rahi, senior farm leader Sukhwinder Kaur provides a rare insight into why farmers in India have been protesting at Punjab-Haryana borders since February 2024. After nearly a year-long protest, talks will be resumed between the farmers and the central government February this year. Kaur, the general secretary of Bharatiya Kisan Union (Krantikari), breaks down the agricultural crisis facing Punjab’s farmers, previously failed talks with the government, and the protesters’ key demands, including guaranteed minimum support prices for crops and withdrawal from WTO agreements. This interview from the Shambhu border, where farmers have been camping, provides vital context to understand one of India’s most significant ongoing protest movements, offering insights into both the immediate triggers and the deeper structural issues facing the Indian agriculture sector.

Read Prashant’s report on how Punjab’s farmers are building a new agricultural resistance here.

 

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Prashant Rahi is an electrical and systems engineer, who completed his education from IIT, BHU, before eventually becoming a journalist for about a decade in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. He was the Chairperson for Human Rights and Democracy at the annual Indian Social Science Congresses held between 2011 and 2013, contributing to the theorisation of social activists’ and researchers’ experiences. Rahi devoted the greater part of his time and energy for revolutionary democratic changes as a grassroots activist with various collectives. For seven years, he worked as a Correspondent for The Statesman, chronicling the Uttarakhand statehood movement, while also participating in it. He has also contributed political articles for Hindi periodicals including Blitz, Itihasbodh, Samkaleen Teesri Duniya, Samayantar and Samkaleem Hastakshep. From his first arrest in 2007 December in a fake case, where he was charged as the key organiser of an imagined Maoist training camp in a forest area of Uttarakhand, to his release in March 2024 in the well-known GN Saibaba case, Rahi has been hounded as a prominent Maoist by the state for all of 17 years. In 2024, he joined The Polis Project as a roving reporter, focusing on social movements.