Lessons from India’s protests
Farmers’ victory touches on same issues Canada is struggling to counter
There’s a concept of empowered resistance in the Sikh faith called “charhdi kala.”
Though associated with a specific religion from a specific region of the world, it’s a term I’ve always viewed as being universally applicable. It means to live in “ever uprising spirit” particularly during the bleakest of times, and against the most crushing of odds.
“Charhdi kala,” however, is more than a poetic inner state. It’s a call to action that can catalyze all aspects of our lives. And when it intertwines with political movements, the combination can be formidable, as the Indian government discovered over this past year as tens of thousands of the country’s smallest, poorest family farmers squared up in protest — and won — against one of the most unyielding regimes on the planet.
Farmers in Asia, a distant conflict, agricultural deregulation — this may all seem far removed from life in Canada, but in this story there are relevant lessons, particularly for many of us feeling dispirited by the seeming hopelessness of our own big challenges, from climate change to income disparity.
When the small organize and become resolved to stand regardless — like India’s Sikh and family farmers just did — even the hardest of governments and most deeply vested of interests can yield to this greater will.
For over a year, India’s small family farmers have protested a series of laws its government passed in a ham-fisted manner and without their consultation.
The laws, broadly speaking, were intended to deregulate the country’s troubled agriculture sector and allow corporations direct access to farmer’s harvests.
The bills were envisioned to be cornerstone legislation for India’s right-wing BJP government to deregulate the sector and to transform the country into an exportoriented agribusiness powerhouse. The farmers, however, believed the bills would open a pathway for the government to exit the sector completely and with it, jettison minimum price guarantees for their crops — this is India’s subsidy version of Canada’s supply-management system.
So farmers from various regions of the country, but particularly the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, occupied the country’s capital, Delhi.
Many of them were elderly and women. They built makeshift encampments and ran communal kitchens as they committed themselves to protesting for the long haul. And for a year, they weathered police brutality, water cannons, bullets, barricades, constant harassment and a steady stream of disinformation campaigns mounted by the country’s compromised media outlets and toady Bollywood stars. Hundreds of farmers have died in the struggle.
But on Friday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced he would be repealing the laws.
The story of India’s family farmers overcoming its high-handed government, of David defeating Goliath, takes place in a theatre outside of Canada.
But it touches on many of the same issues we are struggling to counter: globalization, growing income inequality and climate change — issues that are tangled in our local context.
Protecting our farmers through preserving Canada’s own supplymanagement system can come at the cost of higher non-Walmartlike prices at the grocery store, but the system also ensures our farming families can make a living while serving as ballast to keep our rural regions populated.
Smaller scale farming also promotes greater biodiversity than its large-scale corporate feedlot alternative.