Left comrades are instinctively trained to lend their names to anything that has the word farmer in it. CPI(M) Rajya Sabha members Brinda Karat and Tapan Kumar Sen may find they could have acted in haste while associating themselves with a Zero Hour mention by Tarlochan Singh. Raising an issue which he said was of utmost importance to farmers, Singh said the Government was arm-twisting MNCs into giving grain from Punjab and Haryana the bye. He said the MNCs offer prices much higher than the MSP and the farmers want to sell to them, but the Government was forcing the farmers to sell only to the FCI at lower prices. Karat and Sen raised their hands to associate with the farmers’ issue without realising that the CPI(M) is, in principle, opposed to MNC operation in agriculture procurement.
