NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court on Thursday suggested that the government consider delaying implementation of new agricultural reform laws to restore a dialogue with tens of thousands of protesting farmers who say the legislation will drive down crop prices and devastate their earnings.
Chief Justice S.A. Bobde also deferred a proposal by the court to set up a mediation panel until justices receive the government’s response and hear arguments from lawyers representing the protesting farmers, possibly next week.
Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal said he will get back to the court after discussing the matter with the government.
The farmers have been blocking half a dozen major highways on the outskirts of New Delhi for three weeks and say they won’t leave until the government repeals what they call the “black laws” passed by Parliament in September.
In addition to blocking the movement of people, the massive protest has dealt a blow to manufacturing and business in northern India.
On Wednesday, justices on the court offered to set up a mediation panel after five rounds of talks between the government and farmers failed to end the impasse.
Protest leaders have rejected the government’s offer to amend some contentious provisions of the laws.
The protesting farmers say the laws will lead to the cartelization and commercialization of agriculture and make farmers vulnerable to corporate greed.
They fear the government will stop buying grain at minimum guaranteed prices and corporations will then push prices down. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has said it is willing to pledge that guaranteed prices continue.
Nearly 60 percent of the Indian population depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
The government insists the reforms will benefit farmers and says they will enable farmers to market their produce and boost production through private investment.
On Friday, a farmers’ group filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking the repeal of the three laws. The Bharatiya Kisan Union, or Indian Farmers’ Union, argued that the laws were arbitrary because they were enacted without proper consultations with stakeholders.
A group of New Delhi lawyers has also filed a petition with the court seeking an order to the farmers to vacate the highways connecting northern states to the Indian capital.
India’s Supreme Court suggests government delay farm laws
https://arab.news/zxk69
India’s Supreme Court suggests government delay farm laws
- Farmers have been blocking half a dozen major highways on the outskirts of New Delhi for three weeks
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
