swerte gaming What The Farmers Have Lost Since Their Victory In 2021

Scenes from the Past: Farmers from different states gather at the Ramlila Ground in Delhi during the Kisan Garjana Rally in 2022 | Photo: Getty Images Scenes from the Past: Farmers from different states gather at the Ramlila Ground in Delhi during the Kisan Garjana Rally in 2022 | Photo: Getty Images

Indian farmers—led by Punjab farmers and supported by farmers all over India, especially North India but more actively by Haryana farmers—achieved an unprecedented historic victory in 2021 against the agro-business plan to take over agriculture and the BJP agenda of Hindutva centralisation of governance in India.

This victory was unprecedented because the BJP government, which has ruled India since 2014, had crushed all opposition to its various repressive and religio-sectarian policies but had to surrender in a humiliating way before the farmers’ movement by withdrawing three farm laws it had hurriedly rushed through Parliament in 2020.

The humiliation the farmers’ movement inflicted on the government was also historic and unprecedented. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Guru Nanak’s Prakash Utsav on November 19, 2021, to announce that his government was withdrawing the three farm laws it had enacted and appealed to the farmers’ organisations to leave their camps on the borders of Delhi and return to their homes.

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The government had hoped that its tactical move of choosing Guru Nanak’s birthday to make the announcement would have an emotional appeal to the Sikh farmers to return home after lifting their camps. All the farmers’ organisations welcomed the government’s move to choose the auspicious day to withdraw the hated farm laws. However, to the government’s dismay, they announced they did not trust PM Modi’s assurance and would lift their camps only if the laws were formally withdrawn in Parliament.

The BJP’s supporters launched a widespread media campaign against the farmers’ organisations for insulting the prime minister by not respecting his assurance. The farmers’ organisations stuck to their guns, and the government had to bite the bullet—the laws were speedily withdrawn formally in Parliament.

Democratic forces in the country, even if not directly involved in agricultural issues, rightly hailed the farmers’ victory as an assertion against authoritarianism. There were huge expectations that they would be swept to power if the farmers’ organisations united to contest elections to the Punjab state Assembly in 2022.

I had publicly argued that right on the day the farmers had achieved victory, they should have announced that they would put up candidates in all the 117 assembly constituencies in Punjab. The overall political culture at that time in Punjab was so overwhelmingly favourable to the farmers’ organisations that no political party would have even dared to put up candidates against them. However, the farmers’ organisations committed a historical blunder so epic in scale that future generations would wonder in astonishment how it was possible that a group of organisations, which won a historical victory against an authoritarian government, could so soon become so disorganised that they forfeited the opportunity to seize power in the most crucial agricultural state of Punjab. Not only did they lose a chance to seize power, which is one of those opportunities for which the adjective of golden would be more than appropriate, but their disorientation and historical blunder led to internal dissensions, splits, mutual character assassinations, and, consequently, massive demoralisation.

Farmers celebrating at Singhu border after the government rolled back the three farm laws | Photo: Getty Images Farmers celebrating at Singhu border after the government rolled back the three farm laws | Photo: Getty Images

It has taken nearly four years since that victory—which was turned into demoralisation—for farmers’ organisations to regroup and retake the battle against the agro-business interests they had defeated in 2021. The BJP government, so strongly allied with those agro-business interests, has now released what it has called the National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing. In content, it is not materially different from two of the three farm laws the government was forced to withdraw.

The three withdrawn farm laws dealt with the pricing of agricultural products, contract farming and storage (more appropriately, hoarding) of food grains. These laws represented a clear objective of encouraging private investment by agro-business corporations from home and abroad in the production, processing, storage, transportation and marketing of agricultural products within and abroad. These laws also frontally attacked the constitutionally given agricultural rights of the states and were, therefore, viewed as an attack on Indian federalism. The extreme centralisation inherent in these laws aligned with Hindutva’s homogenisation project against multiple diversities in India.

The National Policy Framework is silent on storage (read hoarding limits), fleetingly concedes agriculture as a state subject, projects the framework as merely consultative and has thus avoided the earlier arrogance displayed during the straightforward enactment of the three farm laws without any consultation with multiple stakeholders in agricultural management. However, the focus of the framework on marketing reiterates the long-term objective of privatising farm management and dismantling the state’s regulatory role, which was the central thrust of the farm laws.

The central government is moving cautiously this time. It seems to be prepared for the long haul in dealing with opposition to its centralisation project in alliance with its agro-business allies’ attempt to take over agriculture.

Punjab needs to take control of its economic, political and cultural destiny and reject externally imposed solutions firmly this time.

Punjab’s organised opposition is fragmented and disappointing this time despite the groundswell of discontent among the peasantry, including landless workers. Even the Punjab government, expected to reject the Policy Framework firmly through the state Assembly, has adopted less strong opposition by rejecting it through its cabinet. However, Punjab’s agrarian sector remains in a structural crisis, accentuated by successive central governments’ declining neglect of agriculture in the last few decades.

One thread running through Punjab’s agrarian crisis is the external governance of the state’s agricultural development. Three external interventions have shaped Punjab’s agrarian sector. The first was the colonial annexation of Punjab in 1849 after the sovereign state of Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his feuding successors (1799-1849) disintegrated soon after the Maharaja’s death.

Punjab and its agriculture were integrated into the vortex of global colonial capitalism. The colonial rulers initiated massive irrigation projects called canal colonies to maximise land revenue and enlist the Punjab peasantry into the colonial army. The fast commercialisation of agriculture and declining commodity prices after the global capitalist crisis of the 1870s pushed the peasantry into indebtedness and land alienation through distressed land sales to moneylenders. The first major peasant struggle, known as Pagri Sambhal Jatta (save your turban), symbolising the fight to save one’shonour and land, was born in the early twentieth century. That struggle retains its inspiration in the collective memory of the Punjab peasantry.

The second ‘external’ intervention was the introduction of the Green Revolution in the 1960s by the central government to meet the nationally (read externally) decided objective of food self-sufficiency. This brought short-term gains in productivity and income to all sections of the peasantry (though unevenly), and better wages to landless labourers for about two decades but long-term losses in the form of increasing indebtedness, ecological degradation of land, water, and air, and cultural degradation in the form of consumerism, atomisation and break up of community networks. One offshoot was the rise of religious revivalism as a response to this all-round social and cultural degradation. This eventually resulted in unprecedented violent disorder that Punjab had not seen for over two centuries. Punjab lost thousands of its young men in their prime ages of productivity.

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The third external intervention was the introduction of the 2020 farm laws with the threatening prospect of an agro-business takeover of the entire agrarian economy. The Punjab peasantry visualised this as an existential threat and called it correctly Hond da swal (question of existence), invoked its glorious traditions of revolt and rose in rebellion as it never had before. It received unprecedented intellectual, economic, political, and cultural support from its diaspora, which took the struggle to the global arena.

To reduce the enormity of the challenges that Punjab’s rural economy and population face to the single issue of statutory Minimum Support Price for crops, though important, is to trivialise that challenge.

Punjab needs to take control of its economic, political, and cultural destiny and reject externally imposed solutions firmly this time. Punjab’s farmers’ organisations need deep introspection. Their capacity to mobilise mass support is unquestionable. They need to mobilise Punjab’s intellectual resources and rich experiences to develop an agrarian policy that is suited to Punjab’s land quality, geography, climate and water resources and aligned with its industrial and financial sectors. History has ordained Punjab’s farmers’ organisations to take the lead. If victorious, the leaders of these organisations will emerge as heroes, and if they fail, they will be destined to be condemned as villains. Punjabis still have hopes from the leaders of these organisations, but time is running out. The enemies, in the meanwhile, are sharpening their weapons. Let it not end in another tragedy. Many leaders believed that Guru Nanak’s blessing helped the 2020-21 farmers’ struggle gain widespread support. Let the Guru’s blessings inspire and empower the masses and leaders again.

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(Views expressed are personal)

Pritam Singh is Professor Emeritus, Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford

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(This appeared in the print as 'Protest 2.0')swerte gaming