Time for farmers' movement to launch a political party

In more than a year of the mass mobilisation of farmers, new cadre and organisational leadership has emerged. It should crystallise into a political party while the movement's energy is still peaking.

With less than six months to go for the Punjab state assembly elections, the mainstream political parties are growing apprehensive that the ongoing farmers’ movement may convert itself into an independent political party. Electoral calculations of the existing political parties in Punjab (and Uttar Pradesh) could go awry should that happen.

Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Gurnam Singh Chaduni, has been arguing that the only way to “change the system” is for the farmers’ unions to contest the forthcoming Punjab assembly polls. He was not contrite even after the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), coordinating the farmers’ movement, suspended him for