Farmer-Centre Talks Make No Headway, Farmers Refuse Lunch With Ministers, Eat Separately

Farmer representatives protesting the centre's agriculture laws refused to share a meal with Union Ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Piyush Goyal and Som Prakash during the seventh round of talks on January 4. They said, "You eat your food and we will eat our food”. Photographs from inside Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan, where the talks were held, showed farmers sitting on chairs (and others squatting on the floor of the hall) with their lunch laid out on a nearby table. There was no headway in the talks and the next meeting will be held on January 8. Last week headlines were made after the two sides agreed to break bread together. Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar & Railways Minister Piyush Goyal were invited to share in the farmers' langar. Images of that lunch were widely seen as a soft breakthrough in discussions that have stalled over the farmers' core demands - scrapping of the agriculture laws and a legal guarantee for MSP. The mood soured by day's end though, with the two sides still unable to agree on core issues.