India-US trade deal will devastate Indian agriculture, says Punjab AAP

Chandigarh:The Punjab Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), on Sunday, condemned the so-called India-US trade deal, calling it a “dangerous, anti-farmer and anti-national agreement that will devastate Indian agriculture and push millions of farmers towards economic ruin”.

Punjab AAP Spokesperson Kuldeep Dhaliwal said that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sunil Jakhar “is celebrating the deal without understanding, or deliberately hiding, its catastrophic consequences for India’s poor and marginal farmers”.

“Sunil Jakhar says AAP is silent. Let me make it very clear, we are not silent. We have been raising objections for the past 10 days, from the very day this deal was announced. It is the BJP that kept the nation in the dark. The Prime Minister could not speak in the Parliament,” Dhaliwal added.

“Instead, the country learned about the deal from US President Donald Trump’s tweets,” he said in a statement.

He added that Trump repeatedly used the word ‘agriculture’ in his statements, which should alarm every Indian farmer.

“Our concern is simple and serious: this deal opens India’s markets to heavily subsidised American agricultural products, directly threatening Indian farmers who already receive little to no support.”

Dhaliwal highlighted the example of red sorghum, 75 per cent of which is produced in the US, while in India it is grown by poor farmers in drought-prone regions of Maharashtra, with no minimum support price (MSP) guarantee.

“If American red sorghum and other American grains and dairy floods Indian markets, our maize, bajra, and indigenous crops will collapse. Farmers in Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh will be wiped out,” he warned.

He also asked: “What will happen to cotton farmers if subsidised US cotton enters India? Where will Jammu and Kashmir farmers go if American almonds and walnuts flood the market? How will apple growers in Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir survive against cheap US apples? What about dairy and other agricultural products that will follow?”

IANS

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