Trudeau and what not to do on farm sector reforms
Justin Trudeau has us divided just as much as the three farm reform bills. Or just about. Ram Madhav questioned the locus standi of Canada’s card-holding liberal premier, and that set off a feeding frenzy. Now, the online warriors are flinging familiar darts at each other: Trudeau’s track record in defending democratic rights around the globe, or his selective outrage, depending on where you stand.
Even if Trudeau has been as proactive in his statements on Hong Kong etc. as on the protesting farmers on Delhi’s borders, it’s hardly an irrelevant fact that the protesters are mostly Sikh, and that he was doubtless catering to a key domestic constituency. His comments are no pure act driven by liberal morality—there certainly exists motivation.
The farm protests have little really to do with Canada—except that some of the protesters may have kith and kin living there. On democratic rights per se, we are on slightly trickier ground: human rights violations anywhere are the business of all humanity. But do the police actions during the ‘siege of Delhi’ really amount to that? This is no Soweto.
Water cannons and teargas are routinely used across the world. To call it ‘brutalisation’ of Sikh farmers, as Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan has done, is not just an overstatement, it’s mischievous. It’s also questionable whether imparting an emotive identitarian spin to an economic controversy really serves the protesters. If anything, it gives their detractors a potent political handle to discredit them.
Comparisons to Indian interventions in Sri Lanka and Nepal are a bit overblown. New Delhi, however, does need to duck reminders of how it openly backed Donald Trump from public platforms. The best way to avoid such a mess is to do a decent job. Being alive to the anger of your citizenry is not bad politics. Meeting Punjab’s food growers at least half way is what would keep this within the family.