DM Monitoring
New Delhi: The all-India farmers’ protest against three contentious farm laws of the National Democratic Alliance government completed four months.
The sit-in protest at the five borders of Delhi, Singhu, Ghazipur, Tikri, Shahjahanpur and Palwal, which began in winter and continued through the bitter cold, now faces a fresh challenge in the capital’s scorching summer temperatures.
But the farmers, who have steadfastly opposed the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020, are unfazed and have begun preparations for the summer heat as well.
Bharat bandh
Despite being ignored by the government, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), the broad front which spearheads the protest and represents more than 500 farm organisations, has chartered a complete course of action for the months ahead. On March 26, the SKM called for a 12-hour Bharat bandh. The bandh was by and large peaceful, even though in some States, the police arrested and detained farmer activists.
In Ahmedabad, the Gujarat police detained Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Yudhvir Singh while he was addressing a press conference about the bandh. According to the SKM, preventive detentions and arrests of farmer leaders were made in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
According to the farmers’ unions, the bandh was very effective in several districts of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana and Punjab. In Andhra Pradesh, the ruling Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party supported the call.
The SKM has now announced a slew of programmes for April and May, including protests at Food Corporation of India godowns and a march to Parliament from all the border points. On March 31, the protests at the border points completed 125 days.
The sit-ins at the five border points of Delhi began on November 26, 2020, and were allowed undisturbed amid the multiple layers of barricading by the police. The protests were kept alive in myriad forms, ranging from celebrations on March 8 (International Working Women’s Day) to paying tributes to martyrs on March 23, commemorated as Shaheed Diwas.
They have gone on for so long for a variety of reasons, particularly the resentment at the police action on January 26 and the ill-conceived actions of the Modi government. A good number of farmers still continue to be in jail.
On March 19, the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government in Haryana enacted the Haryana Recovery of Damages to Property During Disturbance to Public Order Bill 2021.
The law, similar to the one enacted by the U.P government, provides for a Claims Tribunal and purports to recover damages caused during riots, agitations and protests. It states that “any person leading, organising, planning, exhorting, instigating, participating or committing such incidents that lead to damages” will be made to pay compensation.
The opposition in the Haryana Assembly argued that there were already laws in the Indian Penal Code to recover damages to property and for rioting.
The farmers’ unions took all this in their stride and were by now adept at converting every setback into an advantage. One such opportunity, soon after the January 26 events, came through a nondescript player of the movement, Rakesh Tikait of the BKU, at the Ghazipur protest site on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border. On January 28, when a heavily armed police contingent, capitalising on the deflated morale of the protesters, tried to arrest farmer leaders and vacate the Ghazipur site, Rakesh Tikait went live on national television in a teary-eyed emotional speech that turned the entire nationalistic narrative on its head, revealing the farmers to be victims of a conspiracy hatched by the government. It resulted in a massive mobilisation of the peasantry from western U.P, Punjab and Haryana and infused a new energy that took the Central government completely by surprise.
Overnight, Rakesh Tikait became a hero and was in huge demand for all public meetings. The movement regained its lost sheen.
The khaps and Jat caste councils got into action, convening huge mahapanchayats in villages in Haryana and U.P. Meetings were scheduled all over the country, including in southern States. Adopting a broader nomenclature, “khap panchayats” later gave way to the more accepted “kisan mahapanchayats”.
Rakesh Tikait, BKU Haryana leader Gurnam Singh Chaduni and others went to West Bengal and held a meeting in Nandigram, exhorting people not to vote for the BJP. While their appeals may have had limited reach, the message went out loud and clear that the BJP was anti-farmer.
