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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/3-farmers-strike-india/">https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/3-farmers-strike-india/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">My Wish Is That You Win This Fight for Truth: The Third Newsletter (2021)</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Vijay Prashad - January 21, 2021</div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_35589" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Diego-Rivera-Mexico-The-Uprising-1931.-4.jpg" alt="Diego Rivera (Mexico), The Uprising, 1931." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="427" height="336"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-35589" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Diego Rivera (Mexico), <i>The Uprising</i>, 1931.</span></p></div>
<p>Dear friends,</p>
<p>Greetings from the desk of the <a href="https://thetricontinental.org/">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>.</p>
<p>On 26 January, India’s Republic Day, thousands of farmers and
agricultural workers will drive their tractors and walk into the heart
of the capital, New Delhi, to bring their fight to the doors of the
government. For two months, these farmers and agricultural workers have
been part of a nation-wide revolt against a government policy that seeks
to deliver all the gains of their labour to the large corporate houses,
whose profits have ballooned during this pandemic. Despite the cold
weather and the pandemic, the farmers and agricultural workers have
created a socialistic <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/this-winter-our-hearts-are-burning-embers/">culture</a>
in their encampments with community kitchens and laundries,
distribution points providing free essentials, recreational activities
and places for discussion. They are quite clear that they want three
laws repealed and are demanding their right to a greater share of their
harvest be established.</p>
<p>The three laws that the Indian government led by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi pushed would – the farmers say – eviscerate their
bargaining power over the national and global commodity (food) chain.
Without any state protection – including price supports and a public
distribution system for food – the farmers and agricultural workers
would be forced to pay prices set by the large corporate houses. The
government’s laws ask farmers and agricultural workers to surrender to
the power of the corporations, a maximalist position being imposed on
them that makes negotiation impossible.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/20210121_Farmers-Protest-1.jpg" alt="farmers’ revolt." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="427" height="427"></p>
<p><span>The Indian Supreme Court entered the impasse with an order to
create a committee to evaluate the situation, while the Chief Justice
made a remark that the farmers – particularly women and the elderly –
should vacate their protest sites. The farmers and agricultural workers
rightly felt outraged by the disrespectful remarks of the Chief Justice
(Satarupa Chakraborty, a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research, has </span><a href="https://thewire.in/women/cji-bobde-women-farmers-protest-remarks-rights"><span>refuted</span></a><span>
those statements). Women are equally farmers and agricultural workers,
and drivers of the farmer’s revolt – a fact demonstrated by the mass
attendance on Mahila Kisan Diwas (Women Farmers’ Day) celebrated on 18
January at all the encampment sites. ‘When women farmers will speak’,
their banner declared, ‘the borders of Delhi will shake’.</span><span>
‘Women are going to be the worst sufferers of the new farm laws. Though
very much involved in agriculture, they do not have decision-making
powers. The changes in the Essential Commodities Act [for example] will
create a lack of food and women will face the brunt of it’, </span><a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/women-at-farm-stir-we-are-recreating-history/"><span>says</span></a><span> Mariam Dhawale, general secretary of the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA).</span></p>
<p><span>Furthermore, the committee created by the courts is made up of
well-known people who have taken a public position in support of the
government’s laws. None of the leaders of the farmers and the
agricultural workers organisations are on this committee, which means –
once more – that laws and orders will be made for them rather than by
them or with their consultation.</span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_35611" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Soly-Cisse%CC%81-Senegal-Men-and-Lives-V-2018.-2.jpg" alt="Soly Cissé (Senegal), Men and Lives V, 2018." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="427" height="423"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-35611" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Soly Cissé (Senegal), <i>Men and Lives V</i>, 2018.</span></p></div>
<p><span>This recent attack on Indian farmers and agricultural workers is part of a longer </span><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/the-neoliberal-attack-on-rural-india-two-reports-by-p-sainath/"><span>series</span></a><span>
of assaults. On 10 January, P. Sainath, the founder of the People’s
Archive for Rural India and a senior fellow at Tricontinental: Institute
for Social Research, </span><a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/sainath-farm-protest-is-in-defence-of-democracry-were-reclaiming-republic-7141167/"><span>addressed</span></a><span>
a meeting in Chandigarh at which he talked about the broader context.
‘It is not only about the laws, which they have to take back’, Sainath
said. ‘This struggle is not only about Punjab and Haryana; it has gone
beyond this. What do we want, community or corporate-led agriculture?
The farmers are directly confronting the corporate model. India now is a
corporate-led state, with socio-religious fundamentalism and market
fundamentalism ruling our lives. This protest is in defense of
democracy; we are reclaiming the republic’.</span></p>
<p><span>The protests come at a time when there is great international
concern about the situation of hunger and food production from
multilateral agencies. Ismahane Elouafi, the chief scientist at the UN
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), recently </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yearender-global-food-environment-trf/analysis-hungry-for-change-faulty-food-systems-laid-bare-by-covid-19-and-climate-crises-idUSKBN2920AO"><span>told</span></a><span>
Reuters that farmers and poor urban residents have taken the burden of
this pandemic. ‘Cut off from markets and with a plunge in customer
demand, farmers struggled to sell their produce while informal workers
in urban areas, living hand to mouth, found themselves jobless as
lockdowns were imposed’, she said. Elouafi could very well have been
talking about India, where the farmers and the urban poor are equally
struggling to make ends meet in just this manner. Elouafi points to a
general crisis in the international food system that requires serious
consideration at the global level, but also within countries. One of
every five calories that people eat has </span><a href="https://www.ifpri.org/blog/virtual-event-covid-19-and-global-effort-end-food-loss-and-waste-2030"><span>crossed</span></a><span>
an international border, an increase of 50% over the past four decades.
This means that international food trade has dramatically increased,
although four out of five calories are still eaten within national
boundaries. Proper international and national policies for food
production are necessary at both the global and domestic scales. But,
over the past several decades, there has been no real international
debate over these issues, largely because of the domination of a set of
large food corporations in setting the terms of policy.</span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_35578" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Ayanda-Mabulu-South-Africa-Marikana-Widows-2011.-3.jpg" alt="Ayanda Mabulu (South Africa), Marikana Widows, 2011." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="427" height="325"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-35578" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Ayanda Mabulu (South Africa), <i>Marikana Widows</i>, 2011.</span></p></div>
<p><span>The logic of profit has driven the food system to privilege the
production of goods that can be relatively cheaply produced and easily
transported. The best example of this is in cereal production, where the
industry </span><a href="https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/op-ed/pandemic-must-transform-global-agriculture"><span>drives</span></a><span>
‘cheap calorie’ grains (such as rice, maize, and wheat) over nutritious
crops (such as African Bambara groundnuts, fonio, and quinoa) because
the former are easier to grow at a vast scale and are easier to
transport. The ‘calories race’ that this process engenders enables a few
countries to dominate food production and make the rest of the world
net food importers.</span></p>
<p><span>There are several downsides to this: the growth of these cheap
calories relies upon the vast use of freshwater, high greenhouse gas
emissions due to transportation (30% of all such emissions),
clear-cutting of complex ecosystems, and a </span><a href="https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/ministerial/background/notes/3_background_note.pdf"><span>state-subsidy</span></a><span>
regime of $601 billion in Europe and North America (governments in the
Global South, meanwhile, are forced to cut their subsidies). This entire
food production system goes against both the labour of the farmers and
the agricultural workers but also against good health and sustainability
practices, since excess consumption of these simple carbohydrates
creates negative health effects.</span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_35600" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Li-Fenglan-China-Pleasant-Work-2008.-1.jpg" alt="Li Fenglan (China), Pleasant Work, 2008.>" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="427" height="304"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-35600" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Li Fenglan (China), <i>Pleasant Work</i>, 2008.</span></p></div>
<p><span>There is no </span><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/20-2020-famine/"><span>lag</span></a><span>
in food production. There is enough food produced. But the food that is
produced is not necessarily the best kind of food with the nutritional
diversity required for a healthy diet; and even this food does not go to
those who simply do not have the income to eat. Hunger rates had risen
dramatically before the pandemic, and they are now skyrocketing; amongst
those who are hungry are the farmers and agricultural workers who grow
the food but cannot afford to eat it.</span></p>
<p><span>A recent </span><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31859-6/fulltext"><span>study</span></a><span> published in </span><i><span>The Lancet</span></i><span>
has shocking news about the levels of hunger amongst young people.
Researchers studied the height and weight of 65 million children and
adolescents around the world before the pandemic and found an average
20-centimetre height gap due to the lack of healthy nutrition. The World
Food Programme </span><a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/world-food-programme-gears-support-children-left-without-meals-due-covid-19-school-closures"><span>says</span></a><span> that, during the pandemic, 320 million children are missing out on food that is normally provided at school. UNICEF </span><a href="https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-additional-67-million-children-under-5-could-suffer-wasting-year-due-covid-19"><span>notes</span></a><span>
that, as a result of this, an additional 6.7 million children under the
age of five are at risk of wasting. The meagre income support provided
in most countries will not stem this tide. The reduction of food coming
into homes has a catastrophic impact along </span><a href="https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/CA9198EN.pdf"><span>gender</span></a><span> lines, since mothers typically eat the least or forgo food to ensure that everyone else in the family eats.</span></p>
<p><span>Innovations in public delivery of food are essential. In 1988,
China’s government set up the ‘vegetable basket programme’, in which
mayors have to </span><a href="https://money.163.com/19/1231/08/F1NBANB100258105.html"><span>account</span></a><span>
every two years for the availability of affordable and safe non-grain
foods (fresh produce is key here). Hinterlands of cities and towns had
to protect their farmland so that non-grain foods could be grown nearby.
For </span><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12571-019-00961-8"><span>instance</span></a><span>,
with a population of eight million, Nanjing was 90% self-sufficient in
green vegetables in 2012. The existence of the ‘vegetable basket
programme’ enabled China’s cities and towns to ensure that the
population continued to eat fresh produce during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Such programmes need to be developed in other countries, where the food
industry is driven by profit through the sale of cheap calories; these
cheap calories have a very expensive, negative impact on society.</span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-caption">The Bella Ciao of the Indian farmers at the edge of Delhi, December 2020 </span></p>
<p><span>The Indian farmers’ revolt is certainly their fight to repeal
the three anti-farmer bills. But their fight is for much more than that.
It is a fight for the agricultural workers – one fourth of them around
the world are migrants – who have very little security of tenure and
earn extraordinarily low incomes. It is also the fight for humanity, a
fight for a rational food policy that would benefit both the farmers and
those who must eat. </span></p>
<p><span>The protest sites that ring Delhi – and from where the farmer
and agricultural workers will move into the city on 26 January – are
filled with joy and culture. Poets have come to recite their verse to
the people. One of Punjab’s most famous poets, Surjit Patar, wrote a
lyrical poem before he decided to return an award (Padma Shri) he
received from the government. His poem rings across the landscape,
capturing the width of the protest and its music:</span></p>
<blockquote><p>This is a festival.<br>
As far as I can see<br>
Beyond what I can see<br>
There are people gathered.<br>
This is a festival,<br>
Of people and land, trees, water, and air.<br>
It includes our laughter, our tears, our songs.<br>
And you don’t know who are part of it.</p></blockquote>
<p>The poem describes the interaction of a young girl with farmers. The
girl says that when the farmers leave there will be no joy in the world.
‘What shall we do then?’, she asks, and as the farmers weep, she says,
‘my wish is that you win this fight for truth’.</p>
<p>It is our wish too.</p>
<p>Warmly,</p>
<p>Vijay.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/3-farmers-strike-india/?output=pdf">Download as PDF</a> </p></div></div></div>
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