Vipin Patel, the president of the Gujarat Khedut Samaj, which is spearheading the protest in the state, said, “Nearly 40,000 farmers across 12 districts of Gujarat will carry out a protest march on March 16 in their respective villages. We will also distribute pamphlets in trains, buses and various public places on that day.”

Giving specifics of the demands being put forward by the farmers, P Chengal Reddy, the secretary general of the Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations (CIFA), an umbrella organisation for Indian farmers, said, “The commission on agricultural costs and prices (CACP) should be made an autonomous statutory organisation with its primary mandate being recommending remunerative prices for principal agricultural commodities of both dry farming and irrigated areas.”

Also, the minimum support price of commodities should be at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production, as recommended by NCF, Reddy said.

Farmers’ other demands include creation of an ‘agriculture risk fund’ to insulate farmers from risks arising from recurrent droughts and other weather aberrations, establishment of a ‘price stabilisation fund,’ inclusion of agriculture in the concurrent list and provision for adequate credit along with full insurance cover.

Reddy also alleged that successive governments have diluted the credit lending system in the farm sector to such an extent that the share of small loans of Rs 25,000 and below reduced to 11 per cent in 2007 from 49.5 per cent in 1996.