What the government has done to Punjab’s smallholder wheat growers by keeping out of the market while prices plummet is appalling. The bulk of farmers were obliged to sell their crops to middlemen at low prices.

When some protested against the government for abandoning them, the police beat them and imprisoned them. Their situation was recently raised by certain legislators in the National Assembly, with PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari calling it ‘economic murder’ of farmers. Last Thursday, MPs from both the treasury and the opposition discussed the arrests of farmers. Shazia Marri of the PPP encouraged the government to meet protesting growers’ demands, while also calling for a halt to excesses against them. According to PTI’s Amir Dogar, this is the first time in the country’s history that the government has refused to purchase wheat from farmers.

The Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, a group that represents small- to medium-sized farmers in Punjab, claims that wheat farmers have lost Rs1.1 trillion as a result of a sharp drop in grain prices, forcing them to sell their harvest for around Rs3,000 per 40kg or less, far below the Rs3,900 promised by the government. The government could not have purchased the full tradable surplus of 10 million tonnes this year. Nevertheless, its presence inPunjab farmers are facing terrible circumstances, aggravated by policy failure and the import of nearly 3.4 million tonnes of wheat right before the bumper harvest at the direction of the caretaker administration. Imports allowed dealers to earn rapid money at the expense of farmers and urban customers, who paid higher rates for low-quality imported wheat.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif quickly formed a probe committee to determine who was responsible for the decision to import at a time when the country had adequate stocks from the previous harvest and authorities expected a record wheat output due to a significant increase in crop area. Nonetheless, according to media accounts, the inquiry’s scope were then altered, and it was prevented from investigating the suspicious involvement of the caretaker administration in allowing huge imports for unknown reasons. The committee’s mandate is now confined to scrutinising imports in March.

It’s unclear why the premier refuses to investigate the involvement of caretakers in wheat imports, despite the fact that the ‘crisis’ has harmed the ruling PML-N’s standing among farmers. So far, the formation of the probe committee appears to be an attempt to sweep the issue under the rug, unless it is permitted to conduct a thorough investigation and assign blame for reckless imports.