[News] The Indian Farmers Defend the Rights of Farmers Everywhere
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Mon Nov 29 16:18:55 EST 2021
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*The Indian Farmers Defend the Rights of Farmers Everywhere*
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*By Vijay Prashad*
On November 19, 2021, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said
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“[W]e have decided to repeal all three agricultural laws.” The prime
minister was referring to the three agriculture laws that were rushed
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through the parliament in 2020. During his speech to announce the
rollback, Modi told the farmers that they “should return to [their]
homes, fields and to [their] families. Let’s make a fresh start.” At no
point did Modi admit that his government had passed laws that would
negatively impact the farmers, who have spent a year protesting the laws
thrust upon them.
It seems likely that Modi will not give up on his policies to privatize
agriculture
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but rather will return to them with different packaging. “Our government
has been working in the interest of the farmers and will continue to do
so,” he insisted.
*Jubilation at the Victory*
The idea that Modi’s BJP-led government had been “working in the
interest of the farmers” was not apparent to the protesting farmers. To
gauge the sentiment of the farmers and their organizations, I
interviewed Dr. Ashok Dhawale, the national president of the All India
Kisan Sabha—one of the key farmers’ associations—and a leader of the
Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM)—a United Farmers’ Front. Dhawale told me
that Modi’s promise to repeal the three farm laws “is a classic case of
too little, too late.” It is “too little” because Modi only accepted one
of the farmers’ demands (repealing the laws) and not the slate of other
demands, which included the creation of a robust minimum support price
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(MSP) structure; it is “too late” because during this year-long protest,
700 farmers have lost their lives
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due to the privations of the protest and government repression.
“This is only the second time in the last seven years of his rule that
Modi has been forced to make a humiliating climbdown,” Dhawale told me.
“The first was in 2015, when he was forced
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to take back the Land Acquisition Act [of 2013], again as a result of a
countrywide farmers’ struggle.” Since Modi came to power in 2014, he has
pushed an agenda
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to deliver Indian agriculture to the large corporate houses
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But the farmers fought him then and continue to fight him now.
The farmers have not left
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their protest encampment despite Modi’s statement
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on November 19. “They will stay put until these hated farm laws are
actually repealed by [the] parliament,” Dhawale told me. “And also,
until their other demands are… [met]. All over the country, there is
jubilation that one part of the battle has been won. But there is also
[a] determination to see that the other just demands of this struggle
are conceded.”
*Why Modi Surrendered*
Dhawale said that there are several reasons why Modi decided to repeal
the three farm laws. The first has to do with the upcoming
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regional elections in the three key states that border India’s capital,
Delhi (Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh). In recent months, the
BJP saw its supporters dwindle in number during the by-elections that
took place in the Indian states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and
Rajasthan—in which the BJP did not
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perform well. These six states in northern India where elections have
either taken place or are scheduled to take place are in close proximity
to Delhi and are the states from where many of the farmers joined the
protests, which took place at Delhi’s border. If the protests had
continued, the leaders in the BJP felt that the party would see major
attrition not only among the farmers and working class but also among
sections of the middle class in India.
Nothing is more important to focus on, Dhawale said, than the actual
struggle and determination of the farmers. On September 5, for instance,
the farmers organized a /Kisan Mahapanchayat/ (a mass meeting of
farmers), which was called
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by the SKM and saw a huge turnout. The tone of the meeting was fierce,
with the farmers clear that they were not only fighting against these
three laws but also against the entire approach of the BJP government.
The tenor of the protest was to fight for a secular and socialist India,
a vision diametrically opposed to the political ideology of Modi’s
far-right Bharatiya Janata Party known as /Hindutva/.
The tempo of the struggle began to increase through September. On
September 27, the SKM called for a general strike
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across India (/Bharat Bandh/), which was the third such strike during
this year-long protest by the farmers. It was “the most successful of
the three,” Dhawale said, with millions of people joining the struggle.
A month later, on October 18, the farmers blocked
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train tracks (/Rail Roko/) across the country against the BJP
government, which had tried unsuccessfully to use religious differences
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to divide the farmers.
Despite Modi’s announcement to roll back the farm laws, tens of
thousands of farmers planned to gather
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at Delhi’s borders on November 26, the first anniversary of the farmers’
revolt, with others protesting in solidarity around the country. To
build toward this, on November 22, after Modi’s surrender, leaders from
the farmers’ organizations met
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at a large /Kisan Mahapanchayat/ in Lucknow (the capital of the Indian
state of Uttar Pradesh) to pledge to continue the struggle. “The mood of
victory and determination was infectious,” Dhawale told me.
*Unsettled Issues*
Between 1995 and 2018, 400,000 Indian farmers have committed
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suicide, 100,000 since Modi took office in 2014, Dhawale said. Their
deaths are directly linked to the agrarian crisis in India produced by a
combination of the withdrawal of state regulation and intervention on
behalf of the farmers and the impact of the climate catastrophe.
In 2004, the Indian government asked the eminent scientist M.S.
Swaminathan to lead the National Commission on Farmers. By 2006, the
commission produced five landmark reports
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with a long list of important recommendations. Almost none of the
substantial recommendations have been adopted by the successive
governments. One of the recommendations was to increase and strengthen
the MSP for farmers. Window dressing by governments has not improved the
situation for the farmers; a recent survey
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shows that the farmers’ incomes have declined.
Farmers know what they want, and they have said so clearly: price
supports, loan waivers, withdrawal of electricity price hikes, repeal of
the labor codes, subsidized costs of fuel, and so on. These issues,
Dhawale said, “are at the root of the agrarian crisis and massive
peasant indebtedness. They lead to farmer suicides and to distress sales
of farmlands.”
“If farmers are to grow our food and farmers are to eat, then the
demands of the farmers must be met,” Dhawale said. This is not just a
cry for Indian farmers. The farmers in India continue to fight in a
struggle they share with farmers everywhere throughout the world.
/*Vijay Prashad* is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a
writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter
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He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books
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and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
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He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial
Studies
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Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books,
including/ The Darker Nations
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/and/ The Poorer Nations
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His latest book is/ Washington Bullets
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with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma./
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