India / Farmer income won't double if farm laws aren't implemented: NITI Aayog

New Delhi: The Central government's target of doubling farmers' income by 2022 will not be fulfilled if the three farm laws are not implemented with immediate effect, said NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand on Sunday. He also suggested that protesting farmers should sit down with the government and discuss the laws clause-by-clause.

While speaking to media, Ramesh Chand said the only way to break the deadlock between the govt and farmers is through the "give and take" strategy. Sticking to demands invariably will not yield any result, he added.

According to Chand, protesting farmers must speak up and open their minds, otherwise their silence will go against them. "In the society, image is coming that it is becoming political... so they (farmers) must study in detail... they must say 'look this clause is against us'," he added.

The NITI Aayog member then stressed that implementation of the farm laws is extremely important in achieving the target of doubling farmers' income by 2022.

"I will say that if these three farm laws are not adopted immediately, then I don't see that goal (of doubling farmers' income by 2022) getting fulfilled," he said, adding the Supreme Court has already put the farm laws under suspension and even earlier reforms which were going on have been halted.

On genetically modified (GM) crops, Chand said the government should adopt a case-by-case approach.

"We should not have a general view that we support genetically modified crops everywhere or oppose genetically modified crops everywhere. I feel that blanket ban, that come what may we are not going to accept it at all, is not the right approach," he said.

Hundreds of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are camping near Delhi's borders since November last year demanding that the Centre repeal the three contentious farm laws.

Enacted in September 2020, the three farm laws have been projected by the Centre as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove the middlemen and allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country.

The protesting farmers, on the other hand, have expressed apprehensions that the new laws would pave the way for eliminating the safety cushion of the minimum support price and do away with the 'mandi' (wholesale market) system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporates.