Farmers fight for the future
The blockade stretches as far as the eye can see – hundreds of tractors and trailers parked on a highway leading into India’s capital, carrying a distinct message for the government.
For more than a week, thousands of farmers have cut off major entrances into Delhi in massive protests against new laws that deregulate the buying and selling of agricultural goods. While the government says the sweeping changes will spur investment, the farmers camped out in Delhi consider them an existential threat.
The laws will ‘‘ ruin our children’s futures’’, said Kalwan Singh, 72, a farmer from the village of Durana in the state of Haryana who travelled 160 kilometres in a tractor- pulled trailer with his son, grandson and a dozen others. They brought flour, lentils, potatoes, wood for cooking, and thin mattresses for sleeping.
Singh said he was ready to stay until the government repealed the new laws. ‘‘Even if it takes one month, two months, six months, we will win.’’
The farmers – who were met with barricades, water cannon and tear gas when they neared the city – represent a potent challenge for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Agriculture employs more than 200 million Indians – about 44 per cent of the workforce. The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on India’s economy. The country is expected to experience the worst recession since independence in the current financial year, according to projections by the central bank.
Despite several rounds of talks between the government and the protesting farmers, neither side appears inclined to blink.
Yesterday, the farmers called for a new nationwide strike next week and pledged to block all roads leading to Delhi. The protests have already snarled traffic and disrupted truck deliveries to local markets.
Modi has adopted a conciliatory tone towards the farmers, saying they have been deceived by opposition parties about the impact of the new laws. He has assured his ‘‘farmer brothers and sisters’’ that his government’s intentions are as pure as the water of the River Ganges, considered holy in Hinduism.
Such statements have not lessened the distrust of the government among the protesters.
‘‘ They think illiterate people are here,’’ said Jaskaran Singh, a 23-year-old student whose father farms 1.6 hectares of wheat and rice. ‘‘ Aristotle said that if a tyrant wants to rule, he makes the people poor.’’
Jaskaran Singh said the government rushed the laws through parliament in September with little debate and no scrutiny by parliamentary committees.
He and other farmers are also angry at the way governmentfriendly media outlets have portrayed the protesters as ‘‘antiIndia’’, an epithet now applied regularly to critics of the ruling party.
India’s agriculture sector is dominated by small landholdings. Economists say that the country’s future development depends in part on making farming more productive while generating wellpaying jobs for young people migrating from rural areas to cities.
Most of the protesting farmers come from the northern states of Punjab and Haryana. Punjab is often called the nation’s breadbasket for its extensive cultivation of wheat and rice.
The state was a prime beneficiary of the ‘‘Green Revolution’’, a series of innovative farming techniques that transformed India from a country once plagued by famines into one that is self-sufficient in grains. Some economists say those gains have given way to an outdated system that results in the overproduction of rice and wheat, and dangerously depleted groundwater.
In Punjab especially, the government buys much of the wheat and rice produced by farmers at an officially set price via licensed wholesale markets. Under the new laws, anyone with valid identification can buy agricultural produce, bypassing the wholesale markets altogether.
Farmers say they fear a freefor- all where they are at the mercy of private players, including large corporations, with little recourse if deals go sour.