On Monday, February 14, at an election rally in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi said that if his party is re-elected in the state, farmers will be able to sale their produce directly to food processing units from their farms. He said that his govt will set up food parks near farms, which will host food processing units.
However, during the speech, Rahul Gandhi said that farmers will be able ‘grow’ potato chips and tomato ketchup in food parks, “Hoshiarpur is a centre of agriculture and farm tools. Our government will work to create a cluster of food parks and machine tools in Hoshiarpur. Whatever farmers ‘grow’ in the food park, be it potato chips or tomato ketchup, will be made here. You cultivate crop in your field, and from there, take it directly to the food processing unit,” Gandhi is heard saying at around 0.30 seconds in the 1.19-minute video shared by ANI.
#WATCH | “…Whatever you grow in food park, be it potato chips or tomato ketchup, everything can be manufactured by directly transferring your produce from farms to food processing unit,” says Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at a ‘Navi Soch Nava Punjab’ rally, in Hoshiarpur, Punjab pic.twitter.com/4fe7Iw9YRF
— ANI (@ANI) February 14, 2022
Netizens used this to mock him, suggesting that he has promised that farmers will be able to grow finished products like potato chips and tomato ketchup in the food parks. However, this time Rahul Gandhi didn’t goof up on the matters of food processing industry,
Because, in the next sentence itself, Rahul Gandhi says that farmers will be able to bring the crop from their farms directly to the food parks, where the same will be processed and final food products will be produced. “You will grow crops in your farm, from there you will take it directly to the food processing unit. Potato, tomato, chili, whatever the farmers grow they can take it directly to the food processing unit, and they will get the payment directly”.
In general, this is a completely valid promise, a promise the Modi government had already made earlier. It is not something that Rahul Gandhi said, as alleged by some netizens, and his ‘grow chips and ketchup in food park’ can be a minor slip of the tongue.
But what is problematic is Rahul Gandhi’s promise to farmers that they will be able to sell their produce to the food parks, because, for more than a year, the Congress party was opposing the very farm laws that ensured exactly the same. The now-repealed farm laws had provisions allowing the farmers to bypass middlemen and sell directly to the end-users including food processing units. But the same provision was vehemently opposed by the farmer unions and the Congress party.
They had alleged that allowing food processing units to directly buy from farmers will allow them to control the market and exploit the farmers. They had alleged the farm laws were brought by PM Modi to benefit his ‘industrialist friends’ who are in the food processing business. They had listed several benefits of middlemen in the trade of farm produce and opposed any provision that allowed the farmers to bypass such middlemen, including the mandis. Due to the aggressive protests by farmer unions aided by the Congress government in Punjab, the central govt had withdrawn the farm laws, which were already suspended by the Supreme Court.
And now, Congress leader Raul Gandhi is promising exactly the same he and his party was opposing for one and a half years. Now he says farmers can avoid goin=g to a mandi or a middleman and can directly sell to a food processing unit. This is a very high level of hypocrisy that the Kerala MP has shown.
