(Image source from: Dhaka Tribune)
Thousands of farmers marching towards the capital New Delhi on Tuesday over demands ranging from farm loan waiver to reduce fuel prices were stopped at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border with police firing tear gas and water cannons.
Over 50,000 farmers from Uttar Pradesh, a top producer of wheat and cane, blocked part of the chief highway of the capital.
Farmers sought inexpensive power, loan waivers, and rougher action to get sugar mills to pay dues owed for their cane, as dissatisfaction in rural areas turns to rage against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faces tough general elections next year.
"Despite our repeated requests, the government has failed to help farmers in any meaningful ways," a farm leader, Dharmendra Malik, told Reuters by telephone from the protest site.
"Left with no choice, we've decided to march to Delhi to highlight our plight."
In the current season, cash-strapped sugar companies owe cane growers about 135 billion rupees. Burdened with huge piles of sugar and hit by a fall in prices, mills have said they are unable to pay farmers on time.
"The state government has initiated a number of steps to help farmers, including a clutch of measures to expedite cane payments to growers," Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told video news agency ANI, a Reuters affiliate.
Mills are struggling to export sugar because of lower global prices, Adityanath said.
Forces' attempt to keep marchers from breaking through blockades to reach New Delhi by tear gas and water cannon injured quite a few farmers.
"It's ironical that the farmers were brutally beaten on the day of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary," opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said.
Farmers had started dropping into the city late on Monday, prompting authorities to ban gatherings of more than four people.
The administration has permitted police to "brutally beat up" the farmers, said the opposition Congress party.
"Can India's farmers not come and tell their own government that they are in deep pain?" asked Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Modi's rural anguishes have been deteriorated by a letdown to deliver on a promise of tens of millions of jobs for young people that helped him triumph the largest mandate in three decades in 2014.
-Sowmya Sangam
