Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student organisation allied to the ruling Awami League, has called on the young generation, students and youth to cut paddy from the fields in the current Boro season and bring it safely to farmers' homes.

The call was made in a press release signed by the organisation's president, Saddam Hossain, and general secretary, Sheikh Wali Asif Inan, on Monday (24 April).

The release said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the centre of the Bangladeshi people's hopes, is the architect of making the country self-sufficient in agriculture and food grains. Agriculture and farmers make up a large part of her development philosophy, and she has taken landmark steps for agricultural development. That is why, it said, it has been possible to keep farmers smiling and ensure people's right to food even amid a global economic recession and severe food shortages.

The release said "Krishibandhu" (friend of farmers) Sheikh Hasina has made the country self-reliant in food through initiatives including:

• setting up higher education institutions for agricultural development and providing large funds for agricultural research;
• developing weather-tolerant varieties and farming systems suited to drought and salinity, and introducing high-yielding varieties;
• modern, technology-based agriculture, fisheries and livestock rearing;
• direct marketing of farmers' produce through digitalisation;
• preventing crop losses in natural disasters;
• supplying fertiliser and fuel oil at fair prices, and uninterrupted, low-cost electricity in the irrigation season;
• expanding markets for farm produce through road development and bridge building;
• reducing farmers' manual labour by supplying modern farm machinery.

The two Chhatra League leaders said Khana had said in her sayings, "A courtyard full of gourds and cucumbers, says Khana, is the state of Lakshmi (prosperity)." Like Khana, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the architect of modern Bangladesh, has urged people to turn every home into a farm. She has directed that not an inch of the country's land be left uncultivated and that fallow land be used for crops and livestock. Not only has she given instructions, they said, but she has turned her residence, Ganabhaban, into a model farm and donated family land in her ancestral home of Gopalganj for use in integrated farming. Responding to these calls, people are growing food for their families on every rooftop and balcony in the cities and in rural homes on their own initiative.

The Chhatra League president and general secretary said that in the great Bengali liberation struggle, the farmers and students of this country took up arms shoulder to shoulder at the call of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and freed the country from the enemy. In the continuous struggle from Bangabandhu to "Deshratna" (Sheikh Hasina) to secure the rights to language, rice and the vote, the country's farmers and students have been reliable partners, they said.

The release added that Bangladesh Chhatra League, which it described as the only refuge of the students of Bengal and an organisation bathed in the blood of martyrs that led the independence struggle, earnestly calls on the young generation, students and youth to play an uninterrupted and tireless role in cutting paddy from the fields in the current Boro season and bringing it safely to farmers' homes. As in the past, the resolve is that this year too Chhatra League activists will become close friends of farmers by cutting their paddy.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.