Photo Courtesy: Coal India Ltd.

As of the day of publication, the Farmers Protest in India completes 300+ days. It may go in the history as the longest (in terms of  number of days), most disruptive and costly for India. The tempers are high. A slogan however every day given from the protest site is, “Government has to listen as Farmers are the ‘Anndata’.” Anndata means providers of food. So, implication is that if farmers’ demands are not agreed, they will stop farming and country will die of hunger.

Here is what a young school student, son of a coal miner, wrote:

“Let’s consider this Anndata claim of protesting farmers.

The real Anndata are the people who work in coal mines in India.

Farmers can’t be Anndata unless they get water for irrigating their crops. (Fertilizers should also not be forgotten).

They can’t get water unless there is electricity, that too subsidized or free.

(Thank India’s tax payers, whose number is not more than 1.5 crore out of  a population of 135 crore; Agriculture is income tax free in India; So, farmers don’t pay any income tax; and those 1.5 crore tax payers are being taken for a ride everyday by every populist politician in that country. It is recently heard that Tax payers of India are unionizing to challenge those populists who distribute tax payers’ money as if it is their fathers).

Farmers can’t get electricity, unless it is produced and distributed near to their farms; highly subsidized or free, of course.

The electricity production in India is still largely achieved through coal thermal power plants.

Coal is still mined out in India in the most difficult conditions.

Those coal miners risk their lives every day.

The real Anndata are coal miners of India and not farmers.”

Hope young man’s big message is understood in the right earnestness by every Indian including leaders of farmers’ protest.

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