Farm protest, the Tikait way
THE BKU LEADER MANAGED TO REENERGISE THE STIR IN A NEW AVATAR IN HIS HOME TURF, THE SUGARCANE BELT OF WESTERN UTTAR PRADESH
NEW DELHI: When, after months of peaceful protests, a group of farmers stormed the Red Fort and clashed with police in the Capital on January 26, farm unions feared the violent episode could spell the end of their gritty movement.
Instead, Rakesh Tikait, a beefy leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), an influential farmers’ organisation, has managed to re-energise the protests and entrenched them in a new avatar in his home turf, the politically crucial sugarcane belt of western Uttar Pradesh. His model is now being replicated in other states, just as the model led by farmers from Punjab and Haryana, tens of thousands who are camped at Delhi’s Tikri and Singhu borders since November, was being replicated by Tikait’s group at the Ghazipur border.
Since January 28, when the UP Police attempted to vacate the Ghazipur site only to see its number swell, Tikait has been holding a series of “kisan mahapanchayats”, or rural conclaves — respected village institutions of the landed Jat community where social decisions taken by elders are binding. Under him, therefore, the farmers’ protest against three new agricultural laws has branched off into a regional uprising. Analysts say his strategies diverge from those devised by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the national platform of farm unions, in two ways.
First, he has built a groundswell of support for the agitation by raising local farm issues, such as the problems of sugarcane growers, aside from the larger demand of scrapping the farm laws. Second, while farm unions at the national level have vowed to keep their agitation off-limits for political parties, Tikait has departed somewhat from this strategy. Prominent politicians from Opposition parties are freely attending his mahapanchayats, and speaking in them.
The Tikaits belong to the Baliyan khap, a dominant clan among the Jat agrarian community in western UP, most which is made up of sugarcane growers. They voted overwhelmingly for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha, and the 2017 assembly elections.
On February 5, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chaudhary attended the “mahapanchayat” in Bhainswal village in Shamli, a Jat-dominated region of western UP. On Wednesday, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi attended another gathering at Chilkana, Saharanpur.
Politicians from RLD and Samajwadi Party have so far attended gatherings in Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Mathura, Baghpat and Shamli, all in western UP. This sugarcane belt was the “ground zero” of deadly Jatmuslim clashes in 2013, which polarised votes in favour of the BJP since then. Analysts say the Jat-muslim religious divide is now being bridged because of the farmers’ agitation.