There’s a strange anti-democratic current in the ruling establishment. Anyone who is volubly critical of the government’s policies is dubbed an ‘anti-national’; or worse, a Khalistani ‘terrorist’ or Maoist! This time-worn practice seems to have extended itself to the ongoing farmers’ agitation. First it was BJP’s Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar who claimed the farmer’s ranks had been penetrated by Khalistanis. No evidence was provided. This was followed by Amit Malviya - he heads the BJP’s information technology (IT) cell - claiming that the farmers’ protests had Khalistani and Maoist links. Again, no evidence was produced.
Preparing for a long haul
In this case the smear campaign is not sticking. The farmers, who have laid siege to the national capital, have broad support and they are non-partisan in their politics. Their demands, ever since the Union government legislated a set of 3 laws overriding the mandis (or the markets administered by the Agricultural Produce Markets Committee), are specific - repeal the laws and allow the Mandi system with its minimum support price (MSP) to work unhindered.
There is nothing ‘seditious’ in these demands. It’s all about how farmers market their produce, and how they can get the best deal. Opposition parties across the board support them; so do units of the BJP and the RSS like the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Bhartiya Kisan Sangh. It started with a rail-roko campaign in Punjab; but now the protest has broadened to include farmers in UP,Uttarakhand and other northern states. They have a wide array of support - taxi unions, road transporters who have threatened to ground trucks from 8 December, agricultural workers unions and even teachers.
These are people who trace their roots to rural ‘Bharat’, and are emotionally bound up with the long-term future of farmers. There is obvious depth in the movement as it cuts across caste and class. It cannot be dismissed as a fringe protest as was the anti-CAA agitation! The Delhi blockade has all the indicators of a longhaul plan. Tractor trolleys are carrying 3 months of rations. Open ‘langars’ can be seen everywhere. “We have sown our winter crops, and the families will look after them back home.
It’s a long time to the rabi harvest, so we have the time to dig in here,” protestors told reporters at the Singhu border. For urban minds, it is difficult to understand the wrath of the farmers. The new farm laws enacted in September remove the ‘restrictions’ of the APMC or mandi system, and allow buyers and farmers to approach each other directly. It’s a link to bulk purchasers like Reliance Retail, Walmart and Adani - with the possibility of better and long-term deals. Surely, this is better than being eternally paid below the market by wily middlemen!
Understanding the anger
No, say the farmers. They believe the ‘mandi’ system works better. For one, no farmer has to worry about logistics of transportation as the ‘mandi’ or market yard is never more than 3-5 kilometers away. Second, once the big bulk buyers enter, they will monopolize the market. It will be a corporate takeover of rural India with big companies forcing mortgage and control of agricultural land. Now, in periods of overproduction, the minimum support price (MSP) system kicks in.
The government has assured this won’t be dismantled, but nobody is willing to guarantee that in writing. Curiously, in the absence of credit through an easy-access banking system, the middleman has come to pay a pivotal role in the rural economy, and the farmers don’t want it dismantled. The middleman is the lifeline to quick credit at the time of buying seed and fertilizer at the time of sowing; he is also the go-to person when money is needed for a marriage in the family.
All this without red tape and loads of documents that banks demand! The government does not seem to have learnt its lesson from the Bihar experiment, where the APMC system was abolished in 2006. A National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) paper of last year showed that the state saw increased volatility in grain prices post 2006.
Farmers were left to unscrupulous traders who pushed down prices; and the doing away of government monitored warehouses forced farmers to pay heavy for stocking grain in private facilities. It is indeed ironic that armies of impoverished rural folk from Bihar made their way to Punjab and Haryana to work as agricultural labour on farmsteads in these states. At the barricades at the Delhi border, the mood is sombre. The two rounds of talks have not yielded much.
The government is willing to consider a parallel system where the old mandis coexist with the new private grain trade. It has offered to amend the 3 farm laws to allow taxing of private trade outside the mandi system at the same level and permit courts to adjudicate disputes in contract farming. On the farmers side, nothing save the repealing of the 3 farm laws is acceptable. In short, there seems to be a hardening of positions and a prolonged dispute that could turn violent.