Indian Farmers- the story behind the biggest protest in the world
Image courtesy of Satdeep Gill, via Wikimedia, ©2021, some rights reserved.
Towards the end of last year Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough, put a question to Boris Johnson about the Indian farmers’ protest. His response, that it was a complicated issue that was best left for India and Pakistan to solve, reeked of ignorance and disinterest, even if it does seem fair to concede that foreign policy, save Brexit, has not generally been at the forefront of the Prime Minister’s mind in recent times. Pakistan of course has nothing to do with what is being described as potentially the biggest protest in human history- estimates stretch up to 250 million people, far beyond the population of the UK and almost equivalent to the entirety of the USA taking to the streets.
The protests began on November 26th, 2020, as farmers around the country reacted to three landmark reform bills first drafted in September that will completely overhaul the agricultural system in the country. The bills, and the system which they are meant to reform, are far from straightforward. What they amount to is a deregulation of a nationwide agrarianframework, which has been designed to protect the interests of farmers and maintain a minimum selling price (MSP) for products such as wheat or rice. The thinking of Narendra Modi’s BJP government is that these changes will free up the agriculture sector, bringing it in line with other parts of the economy, and help to stimulate economic growth. The protesting farmers argue that these measures will put them at the mercy of the market, taking power out of their hands and putting it into that of private corporations.
The move is broadly in keeping with Modi’s neoliberal economic agenda, which has previously seen a sudden demonetisation programme in 2016 and the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2017. What also unites all of these policies is the autocratic, negligent, and arguably anti-democratic, way in which they were rolled out. Neither farmers’ bodies, nor the state governments were consulted about the three agricultural laws, and while the discussion about the long-term advantages and disadvantages of the reforms can and will rage on, what is more problematic is the lack of assurances or measures put in place to provide farmers income security going forward.
Over the course of the previous few decades the situation for farmers in India has become increasingly desperate. In the 1970s the agricultural sector offered employment to approximately 50 % of the Indian population, accounting for an almost equivalent share of the economy. While the employment numbers have hardly changed its economic value in India has now to sunk to just 15%, meaning farmers have been increasingly saddled with debt and have struggled to make ends meet. This has led to a horrifying suicide crisis, probably the worst such occurrence in the world at the moment. The National Crime Records Bureau of India reports that between 1995 and 2019 an astounding 296,438 farmers committed suicide, including 20,000 in the last two years alone. With that in mind, the government’s seeming apathy is that much more inexplicable. These measures surely threaten to exacerbate rather improve this situation. That too, in the midst of a global pandemic, that is bound to have taken a toll on the struggling farmers.
The situation has been further aggravated by the governmental response to the largely peaceful protest. As farmers marched towards Delhi from Punjab and other Northern States, their way was blocked off by barricades and guards armed with tear gas. The protestors did make their way through to Delhi, with thousands of protestors now blocking off some of the major roads into and out of the Indian capital. With a strong Sikh presence at the protests, temporary gurdwaras, Sikh places of worship that offer free food to all, have been created to feed the protestors, and the farmers seem prepared to wait it out.
Their efforts have been further hampered by an internet shutdown across their camps. This is a measure that has become increasingly favoured by Modi’s government. In 2019 Access Now reports that of the 213 documented internet shutdowns in 2019, 121 of these took place in India. Kashmir bore the brunt of these, following their controversial constitutional amendment, which revoked India’s only Muslim majority state’s special status, splitting it into two Union territories, with much less autonomy than it had before. The anti-democratic action has this time been coupled with an ongoing legal battle with Twitter. The global social media company initially ceded to their demands to suspend certain anti-government accounts, including a major investigative publication, the Caravan, which counts the award-winning fiction author Arundhati Roy among its contributors, but has since reinstated the Caravan’s rights. The legal battle continues, however, with the BJP government seemingly keen to marginalise Twitter in India and promote more malleable homegrown social media alternatives.
These drastic measures have come into the global public consciousness largely not via international journalists but instead by an odd concoction of outraged celebrities, with Rihanna, Greta Thurnberg, John Cusack, among others, speaking out against Modi’s crackdown. The backlash has been pretty remarkable, with BJP cabinet ministers railing against international meddling, and Indian nationalist counter protestors burning images of Greta Thurnberg, accusing her of weaving conspiracy theories in a country she knows nothing about. Now the group of people who seem to loath the Swedish teenager, of Fridays for Future acclaim, with every fibre of their being has expanded to include angry old Indian men as well as angry old white men.
And all the while, instead of listening to the peaceful protestors, Modi’s government seems convinced to continue on shutting out the noise, no matter what they have to do. This incident, which is certainly far from over, is just one example of Modi’s increasingly autocratic tendency. His anti-Muslim citizenship amendment policies just over a year ago also brought millions to the street, and were dealt with in clandestinely violent ways, while the future Kashmir remains uncertain. Boris Johnson, like most other world leaders, has been reluctant to challenge the Indian government on any of these issues, while former President Trump cosied up to his fellow populist at an event entitled ‘Howdy, Modi’ in 2019. Many around the world will therefore be watching carefully, how US-India relations develop under the new Biden-Harris administration.
