Pradhan Mantri asli kisano se baat kare, naqlion se nahi, hamara protest jari rahenga jab tak yeh kale qanoon sarkar wapas nahi laitey,” (PM must talk to real farmers, not fake ones; our protest will continue until these black laws are rolled back).
This is how the striking farmers reacted to Prime Minister Modi’s address at the ‘Kisan Kalyan’ event when Radiance Viewsweekly spoke to a group of protesting famers who have been camping at Singhu border, which has emerged as the epicentre of farmers’ protest since its beginning on November 27.
While addressing through video conferencing a ‘farmers’ programme in Madhya Pradesh on December 18, Modi stoutly defended the three laws passed by his government in September this year.
“Farm laws have not been introduced overnight. Over last 20-30 years, central government and state governments had detailed discussions on these reforms. Agriculture experts, economists and progressive farmers have been demanding reforms,” he said.
This intransigent attitude of the government has dashed any hope of early resolution to the ongoing Kisan protest, which has entered the fourth week now.
As multiple rounds of talks with the Modi government have failed to yield results, the farmers unions have intensified their protest, insisting the contentious laws must be scrapped.
The government emissaries have offered various “concessions” and face-saving “amendments” as lures but the farmer leaders have unequivocally stuck to the demand of an outright repeal of the three laws in toto.
The godi media of the regime has tried hard to smear the protestors, calling them “Khalistanis”, “urban Naxals”, “anti-national” and worse. But the farmers have stood firm and brushed aside with contempt these smear attempts of the pro-BJP elements in the mainstream media.
Buta Singh, a farmer leader, has said that protestors will not settle for anything less than withdrawal of farm laws.
At the last meeting with the government on December 5, farmers’ leaders said, “We have material with us to last a year. We’ve been on road for past several days. If the government wants us to stay on road, we’ve no problem.”
“We do not want corporate farming. The government will benefit from this law, not the farmer,” they added.
Meanwhile, in a deft move to thwart government machinations to divide the farmers’ movement, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), one of the umbrella bodies leading the farmers’ agitation in Delhi, removed its national convenor V.M. Singh from the post. Singh had gone against the grain, and as the convenor of the body had offered to hold separate talks with the government to bring in legislation for guaranteed minimum support price (MSP).
Agitating farmers said the move against Singh was to contain “fresh attempts” to fuel divisions among farmer bodies after attempts at discrediting them as Khalistanis, Naxalites and ‘tukde tukde gang’ failed.
Furious at union ministers and BJP leaders, who sought to undermine farmers’ protest with pejoratives, including by labelling them as ‘tukde tukde gang’, Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal accused his former ally of being “the real tukde-tukde gang”.
Tearing into the BJP over the farmers’ protest, junior Badal alleged that the ruling party is destroying national unity by maliciously “pushing patriotic Punjab into communal flames” for political gain.
Badal – who led the Akalis out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in protest against the farm laws – also said the BJP was “shamelessly” inciting violence between Hindus and Sikhs.
Addressing a gathering in Amritsar, Akali chief said, “The BJP is the real tukde tukde gang in the country. It has smashed national unity to pieces… shamelessly inciting Hindus against Muslims and now desperate(ly) setting peace-loving Punjabi Hindus against their Sikh brethren, especially farmers.”
Punjab has emerged as the focal point of the nationwide protest – involving thousands and thousands of farmers – against the farm laws and stakes are high for the Akali Dal, which lost power to Congress in the last assembly election.
Eyeing on the next year’s Punjab assembly elections, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has come out actively in support of the farmers’ movement. Kejriwal convened a special session of the Delhi Assembly on December 17 to discuss the agitation. He tore up copies of the three farm laws that have been at the centre of the protests by farmers for more than 20 days.
Addressing the session, Kejriwal said, “What was the hurry to get farm laws passed in Parliament during the pandemic? It has happened for the first time that three laws were passed without voting in the Rajya Sabha… I hereby tear the three farm laws in this Assembly and appeal to the Centre not to become worse than Britishers.”
Political commentator, Vinod Mubayi said, “It is by now hardly any secret that the economic logic promoted by Modi, following the Gujarat model of a low tax, absence of regulation and licence to pollute economy he implemented as Chief Minister of that state, is crony capitalism on steroids. It is no accident that Ambani’s and Adani’s wealth has multiplied many-fold in Modi’s tenure as Prime Minister.”
The fact that the protesting farmers by and large understand this fact well and can eloquently articulate the motivation underlying the new farm laws shows that they are by no means the unsophisticated yokels that they are portrayed as being in the saffron-influenced mainstream media, or as illiterate simpletons who are being misled by “outsiders” and who do not understand or are simply unaware of the benefits Modi is going to shower on them.
The government also skipped the winter session of the Parliament by using the pretext of Covid pandemic. Opposition slammed the decision accusing the government of running away from the farmers’ movement which has disrupted lives across North India.
As intensifying the protest, farmers unions observed ‘Bharat Bandh’ on December 8 and held hunger strike and burned effigies of Modi-Ambani-Adani on December 14.
The iconic images of the effigies of Modi, Ambani, and Adani being burnt by protesting farmers on the Delhi-Haryana border show the depth of their rejection of the pro-corporate farm laws. These demonstrations are the largest protests in the country since the “Shaheen Bagh” protests against the Modi regime’s anti-minority Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) last winter that were brutally crushed by the government following the pogrom against Muslims in Northeast Delhi in late February and March of this year.
Since the end of November tens of thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and other parts of India are camping at the borders of Delhi to protest the new farm laws braving bitter cold conditions. Among these farmers are also women who have walked miles from home to be part of this agitation.
“More than 20 protesting farmers have died so far… I want to ask the Modi government, when it will wake up?” asked a young farmer Parmitpal Singh from Ferozpur (Punjab).
In frustration, a priest of a Gurdwara from Haryana, 65-year-old Baba Ram Singh, who joined the farmers’ protest, has died by suicide. In a note, the Sikh priest said he was sacrificing his life “to express anger and pain against the government’s injustice.
The deceased Sikh Giani also blamed RSS in the suicide note, saying it is trying to annihilate the Sikh community: “The RSS has resolved to end the Sikh community and the Sikh race. The Sikh community has always been under attack and is still being attacked. Some Sikhs themselves have become their sycophants. It is a shame that they are working for the RSS – some for the sake of power, some for the sake of money, and others by force. The RSS is winding itself around the Sikhs like a snake.”
Meanwhile, the size of the protesters at Delhi border has swelled further to several kilometres as more and more farmers are continuing to join the movement. The borders leading to Delhi are closed at Singhu, Tikri, and Ghazipur and partly at Shahjahanpur.
Unnerved by the fast spread of the ongoing Kisan protest, BJP has stepped up measures to counter the farmers’ narrative on the contentious farm bills. The party has planned 700 farmers’ meets and 100 press conferences in 700 districts over the next few days.