Chandigarh’s political landscape heated up on Sunday as Punjab’s Aam Aadmi Party unleashed a fierce critique of the emerging India-US trade agreement. Labeling it a ‘farmer-hostile, dangerous, and anti-national’ pact, AAP spokesperson Kuldeep Dhaliwal warned that it could devastate India’s agricultural backbone.
The party contends that opening Indian markets to heavily subsidized American farm goods will crush local farmers already grappling with inadequate government support. Dhaliwal directly targeted BJP’s Sunil Jakhar, accusing him of celebrating the deal while ignoring its catastrophic fallout for poor and marginal farmers.
‘BJP leaders are either clueless or deliberately blind to the ruin this will bring,’ Dhaliwal thundered. He stressed that AAP has been vocal in opposition since the deal’s announcement, countering Jakhar’s claims of silence. The party highlighted the irony: Indians learned of the pact not from Prime Minister Modi, but from Donald Trump’s social media boasts, where ‘agriculture’ featured prominently—a red flag for every Indian farmer.
Dhaliwal painted a grim picture of flooded markets with cheap US sorghum, corn, grains, dairy, cotton, almonds, walnuts, and apples. In Maharashtra’s drought-hit regions, small sorghum farmers without MSP guarantees would be wiped out. Punjab and Haryana’s grain growers, Karnataka’s maize producers, Uttar Pradesh’s dairy farmers, Jammu & Kashmir’s nut growers, Himachal’s apple orchards—all face existential threats from this unequal competition.
‘This isn’t trade; it’s economic sabotage,’ Dhaliwal declared, urging immediate intervention to protect India’s agrarian heartland. As debates rage in Parliament, AAP vows to amplify farmers’ voices against what they see as a betrayal of rural India.