By Justice Markandey Katju–
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)
A farmers’ agitation is going on in parts of north India, demanding Minimum Support Price (MSP) for their produce. I have sympathy for the agitating farmers, who should get adequate prices for their agricultural produce, but I don’t see how this agitation can achieve this goal. MSP will not be granted by the government due to pressure by this protest. I fear that the agitation will only end in violence, as on Bloody Sunday in January 1905 in St Petersburg, Russia or in Vendémiaire in Paris, France in October 1795.
A ‘whiff of grapeshot‘, as fired by Napoleon’s canons, will probably disperse these agitators. The leaders of the agitating farmers may well be Father Gapons, who was secretly a police agent. Several so called ”independent intellectuals‘ and ‘independent’ journalists seem to be agent provocateurs, who to show their ‘free’ thinking’, and concern for the farmers, are only inciting the misguided innocent farmers to become sacrificial lambs.
The Congress party, which always seeks an issue to berate the government and fish in troubled waters, will not want to be left far behind, and put in its two bits. Let us see how things turn out. I myself am very skeptical about this agitation. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, “It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
