The Farmers’ Protest in India – What’s Happening, and Why We Must Watch

By Fiona McKenzie Johnston 

The Indian Farmers’ Protest has reached a critical point.  While the demonstrations are countrywide, it is in Delhi that they are receiving the most attention. Here capital police armed with steel rods have erected nail-studded barricades around protest sites. They are also employing tear gas and water cannons, and are arresting protestors, activists and journalists trying to cover the protest, charging them with criminal conspiracy, terrorism and sedition. People have gone missing, there are reports of extreme police brutality, and the number of known deaths caused by the violence is mounting. 

Chaos has been exacerbated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government turning off internet and phone services in the areas that service the main protest sites (also affecting residents, local amenities and health care providers – which, during a pandemic, is not just irritating but dangerous.) Last week, the government ordered Twitter to suspend nearly 250 accounts - including one belonging to The Caravan, an independent magazine that covers politics and culture (the journalist trying to cover the protest for The Caravan, Mandeep Punia, was arrested and held for three days; he said that he was badly beaten by police while he was in custody.)

International celebrities who have spoken out - Rihanna and Greta Thunberg - have had their effigies publicly burnt by the United Hindu Front (a far-right nationalist organisation) while the Indian government released a statement accusing them – and all foreign commentators - of joining a bandwagon without knowing all the facts.

So here are those facts.  (For those less interested in farming, and more interested in human rights, skip the next four paragraphs.  Though it is worth knowing that India is the world’s largest producer of cotton; this issue is therefore pertinent to fashion supply chains.)

Farming in India

India’s farming sector is huge; its arable land area is the second largest in the world (after the USA.)  But when India was born as an independent nation in 1947, food was scarce.  The grain trade was controlled by landlords and moneylenders, who bought cheap, and sold expensively.  And so the state took the decision to control the food trade, by setting up mandis run by Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs), and introducing a minimum support price (MSP) for farmers in key crops. 

Fast forward 70-odd years, and farming is increasingly low-profit for the families depending on it for their income, which is 60% of the population. Global warming and urbanisation have caused droughts and floods, a fertiliser-subsidy programme has led to a worsening of soil quality, fines are levied for the pollution-causing burning of stubble (and yet there have been no subsidies for an alternative solution), nearly 70% of Indian farms are less than a hectare in size – it’s the perfect set of circumstances for a drip, drip, deterioration to total collapse of farm wealth. This is reflected in the staggeringly high suicide rates among farmers (300,000 since 1995 – that’s 12,000 a year.) That reform is needed is undebatable (although the current structure does at least ensure some revenue.)

However the three recent laws, which were first issued as ordinances on the 5th June 2020 (when parts of the country were still in lockdown) and then introduced as farm bills in Parliament on the 14th September and rushed into Acts by the present government less than a week later, are seen by the farmers as devastating.   Between them, they make APMCs virtually redundant, set the ground for taking away MSPs, and remove state control over the amount of raw foodstuffs that can be stocked by traders and producers (which has the potential to lead straight back to that grain trade problem of two paragraphs up, still remembered by those who lived through Independence.)  Additionally, many see the laws as robbing from the resourceless-poor to give to the rich, paving the way for a land grab by corporates, who will be able to buy farms at rock-bottom prices once they have failed.

The Indian government has offered to suspend these new laws for 18 months, and set up a committee to look into concerns about the legislation, but the United Farmers Front (a coalition of unions) has rejected the government proposal, saying that they will accept nothing less than the complete repeal of the laws. (Their rejection has much to do with their trust – or lack thereof - in Modi’s government.)  And so tens of thousands of farmers – men and women, old and young - are still in Delhi, where the pandemic is ongoing, and there is the descent into violence of what started as, and was always meant to be, a peaceful protest. 

Back to the protest, and the unlawful government response

The protestors and activists – and many Indian citizens and journalists - are of the belief that the violence has been sparked by right-wing  groups acting on behalf of or in cooperation with the government, who have infiltrated the protests with actions that account for the heavy-handedness of the police. It’s feared that this will lead to an increasing number of deaths.  Add in the media blackout, and there’s the potential for what is happening to become even more horrifying – and to be covered up. 

It’s why such measures as those being taken by Modi’s government are in contravention of UN resolutions; article 19 declares no government can block internet networks or close down any website because of their roles in organising or soliciting a peaceful assembly.  The UN has also emphasised journalists’ license to monitor and document any assembly, including those that are violent. Regardless of the UN, the right to free speech and freedom of expression is written into the Indian constitution – a point regularly violated by Modi’s government.

India is supposedly the largest democracy in the world, and a secular state. Nevertheless Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, actively promotes ‘purity of race’. Several BJP-ruled states have passed laws regarding mixed-faith marriages, and 2019’s Citizen Amendment Act caused huge protests due to the Act’s discrimination on the basis of religion. Shockingly, CAA protestors were still being arrested and imprisoned even at the height of the pandemic, when Covid cases were rising and jails were already highly congested.  No source I have spoken to for this article was prepared to go on the record; whether they are in Delhi or are part of the Indian diaspora, the fear of reprisal is real.

As for removing internet access, the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir endured a seven-month blackout in 2019/2020, the longest-running internet shutdown in a democratic country, ever.  When it was restored it was the less-than-helpful 2G - until this weekend, when 4G was again afforded to the residents, 18 full months after it was switched off.  (The more cynical might wonder about the timing.) 

The nuances of farming reform aside, it is Modi and the BJP’s wilful curbing of free speech, right to protest and removal of resources, along with the police-led violence, that is all anyone needs to know about to justify their support of the Indian Farmers’ Protest. When a government acts unlawfully, it is imperative that the world keeps an eye trained in its direction; India must know that we are watching.