joins me a journalist and press officer for the sikh press association a very good evening to you um how widespread have these protests been and are they confined to one part of india or nationwide uh good evening ian so these these protests have actually been worldwide um in india we have seen a day of strike where 250 million people went on strike and that's out on a 402 million working population so that's the vast majority of people in work in india going on striking supports these farmers on a daily basis we're seeing hundreds of thousands roughly rough estimates are about 250 000 people at any one time um but this is like a rolling figure because sometimes the farmers go back to their farms and maybe a relative will come and take their place at the protest um so you know hundreds of thousands of people in india from all corners of the country coming to bentley uh to protest uh on the board roughly and then we've seen protests in london we've seen protests in the usa we've seen protests all over the world in support of the farmers as well and what's the indian government's response been so far well from a lot of it has been has been through the control of the media they have been silencing journalists um they've been arresting journalists torturing journalists as well as allegations of torture torture for a number of journalists and they've shut the internet down in some areas haven't they and and tried to ban people from twitter that's right that's right they're actually moving to a new platform which they've just announced today to try and take everybody off twitter because there's too much freedom of speech for people to convey what their the real concerns are about this process for their liking in terms of the importance of the agricultural sector to the indian economy it is phenomenal isn't it i think did i do i remember right that heart nearly half of indian people are involved in agriculture in one way or another and it accounts for about 15 of gdp yes that's right that's that's what i've read as well um you know india's always been a a very agricultural agriculturally heavy uh economy uh punjab especially and this is where the the kind of protests started from uh up in punjab uh there's been a lot of farmer suicides in punjab as well so there's been around a thousand suicides per year um because these measures that have been kind of introduced it's happened over time since around about the year 2000 uh we've seen like a steady um kind of ramping up of bureaucracy around the agricultural sector um so there's been 22 000 uh suicides farmer suicides in the last 20 years um and we're seeing you know the the margins that farmers are getting not just in india actually all over the world but we've seen the margins becoming slimmer and slimmer but the these are supposed to be liberalizing measures aren't they they're not there to increase further bureaucracy as i understand it well yeah i mean if if that was the case i i don't understand why the indian government would be trying to silence everybody as well uh the the former world bank chief goshik basu actually recently came out and said when he first had a look at these bills on the surface they did seem to be you know um benefiting farmers but when he had a kind of really good look at them went through the figures you realize that actually this would be very detrimental to the whole farming community um let me read you out this tweet from somebody called awoken um iandale showing his white imperialist ignorance again on india this time lbc it is not okay to have a white british person talking about indian topics hugely offensive i mean i kind of inwardly sigh when i read things like that because um i mean there aren't many people on british radio who talk about these subjects but i am one of them because i i kind of want to learn myself i don't portray myself as an expert but i mean if they got a point in any way well i think you're you're the kind of person that your viewers relate to so i think the message coming from you has has even more power to be honest i think you know i applaud you for actually taking this uh this topic and actually running with it and you know sharing it with your listeners um i don't have a lot of place for racism whether it's for white people for anybody else towards anybody else i think you know everybody has that right to freedom of speech and and you know you exercising it to promote this this issue you know i don't think you should be faulted for that well thank you that's dwindling uh journalist and press officer for the sikh press association uh aaron we are going to come to your cause in a minute by the way erin core is a punjabi sikh entrepreneur and digital creator and founder of by erim uh erin very good evening to you um why do you care so much about this issue hi uh thank you so much for having me on um mata's relating to the sikh community and not only just the sikh community but india is a country and now what we are starting to realize is ultimately it it's a global issue because no farmers means no food i've been very active within the sikh community speaking since i was 18 years old in the seat society committee and now having um a following that's over around 400 000 i do believe that it is my duty to speak up about these matters so what's your reaction to what the indian government are trying to do because their their supporters will say look we're just trying to bring indian agriculture into the 21st century we cannot go on with the kind of subsidies and bureaucracies that have existed up to now all we're doing is trying to make things um maybe a bit more like the rest of the world i think really it is about the way that things are being done set aside what darwin depal whose sentiments i completely reflect um in regards to the political side of things they have completely censored the internet they've been arresting journals there's been media blackouts in billy haryana who had a complete internet blackout for nearly a week we've had to have um various seek organizations including culsa aide come up to set up wi-fi sites and what's happening now is we're seeing that hundreds of protesters are being named as missing now and it's so dangerous because wi-fi allows people to stay in contact with their family not only that but it allows them to stay educated and informed about what's going on and kind of now what's starting to happen is the western world is starting to listen and thankfully you guys have given us this platform to speak about it on lbc and economists are doing their own analysis of what's going on and they're also sharing content that is super valuable so people like myself with followings as well as those without are able to amplify it had this been a more peaceful situation i think it would have been a lot more easy for me to take that apart from what's going on politically but i can't i i think having been born and brought up in a country of what 68 million people now and geographically relatively small is that it's actually quite difficult for um a lot of british people to understand the vastness of india as not just in population but in land mass um in terms of the support for the protests over the whole country is this something that is uniting different communities because obviously india is not a homogenous country is it 100 and this is something i'm so proud to see at the beginning yes it was a lot of people from the south asian community speaking up about it because we do have friends and family who are currently residing in india which is of course the source of every of everything going on right now um but that word is slowly starting to get out and it is due to opportunities like these where young sikhs like myself the sikh press association have that platform to speak about it and get the word out there and if people want to follow you on social media how can they do that uh they can do so by following me it's just at arim er i am on instagram tick tock and twitter is aaron core and i would most definitely encourage you to follow khalsa aid as well as the seek press association to keep up to date with all matters regarding this well hopefully you get a few more followers thank you very much indeed that's erin core there