'Effort to create one market': Farmers on One Nation One Election

NEW DELHI: The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a farmers’ group, criticized the government’s ‘one nation, one election’ bill on Tuesday. The group believes the bill weakens states’ rights and benefits corporations. The SKM led protests against farm laws in 2020 and 2021. They urged farmers and workers to protest against the bill.
The SKM said the bill is part of a plan to give corporations more control. They linked the bill to other government policies like the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Digital Agriculture Mission, National Cooperation Policy, and a recent agriculture marketing framework.
“SKM strongly opposes the introduction of One Nation One Election Bill in the Lok Sabha by the NDA Government and alleges this is part of the corporate agenda to create 'one nation one market' for facilitating corporate exploitation of the working people by eroding the autonomy and the federal rights of the State governments,” the SKM said.
The group claims the 2017 GST implementation weakened states’ control over taxes. They also believe recent agriculture policies could bring back the repealed farm laws. The SKM called on opposition parties to address issues like minimum support prices (MSP) for crops, minimum wages, unemployment, inflation, and debt.