[A year on, protesters against the
country’s agricultural laws are taking an increasingly confrontational approach
with the country’s leaders.]
By Emily Schmall, Hari Kumar and Mujib Mashal
With that series of events, a
yearlong protest by farmers against the Indian government escalated into a
dangerous new phase.
Frustrated at what they see as
intransigence by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, over a series of new
agricultural laws, the farmers have taken a more confrontational approach with
the country’s top leaders. They are now shadowing top officials of Mr. Modi’s
government as they travel and campaign, ensuring their grievances will be
difficult to ignore.
The farmers blame government supporters
for the jeep incident in early October, which left four of their number dead
and killed four others, including a local journalist. But the incident shows
that farmers who have camped outside the Indian capital of New Delhi for months
are increasingly prepared to take their protest directly to government
officials’ doorsteps.
“This is now a fight for those who
died,” Jagdeep Singh, whose 62-year-old father was among those run over by the
jeep, said from the family farm. “And those who are living, this is now a fight
for all of us until we die.”
Elsewhere, under the harsh light of
an LED lamp in an unfinished brick farmhouse, Ramandeep Kaur wept over the loss
of her cousin, Lovepreet Singh, a 19-year-old who was studying English in hopes
of getting an education and living in Australia.
“Until they take back those laws,”
she said, “the farmers’ agitation will continue.”
The deadly incident took place in a
remote corner of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and a prize in
elections to be held early next year. The protesters were shadowing top members
of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., as they
began to campaign.
The farmers’ goal is not
necessarily to defeat the B.J.P., whom polls suggest will cruise to an easy
victory. The party’s top elected leader, Yogi Adityanath, is a Hindu monk and
protégé of Mr. Modi who is popular with the party’s Hindu base, and the
opposition is fragmented. Instead, the farmers aim to draw more national and
international attention to their plight.
The protesting farmers think that
Mr. Modi’s market-friendly overhaul last year of the nation’s agricultural laws
will put them out of business. India’s Supreme Court has suspended
implementation, and the government has proposed a series of amendments. The
farmers balked, saying they would settle for nothing less than their full
repeal.
Further action could take years,
given the court’s full docket, but the farmers fear the suspension will be
lifted if they let up.
No one disputes that the current
system, which incentivizes farmers to grow a huge surplus of grains, needs to
be fixed. The protesters fear the speed — the laws were passed in mere weeks —
and the breadth of the changes will send the price of crops plunging. Mr.
Modi’s government argues that introducing market forces will help fix the
system.
“The composition of farming has to
somewhat change,” said Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a B.J.P. spokesman on economic
issues. “The farm sector needs heavy investment, and that can come from the
private sector.”
Mr. Modi has responded to the
protesters by waiting them out, a strategy apparently driven by the calculation
that their movement does not represent a coherent political threat. Many of the
protesters come from India’s minority Sikh community, while the B.J.P. draws
its political power from rallying the country’s Hindu majority.
“‘Farmers’ is not a category that
the B.J.P. uses,” said Gilles Verniers, a political science professor at Ashoka
University. “They talk about the poor and they speak the language of caste and
obviously the language of religion.”
Farmers have sought to get not only
the B.J.P.’s attention, but the attention of the nation. A series of
confrontations with B.J.P. leaders since September may not sway the election in
Uttar Pradesh, but it could revive support across India and even globally for a
protest movement that appeared to have been running out of steam, Mr. Verniers
said.
Though the protests have been
largely peaceful, they have spurred occasional bouts of violence. In January
protesters and the police clashed after
some farmers drove their tractors into New Delhi. Protest leaders have
distanced themselves from a shocking incident earlier this month at the farmer
protest camp outside New Delhi, in which a group from a Sikh warrior sect
killed and cut off the hand of a lower-caste Sikh, a Dalit, who they accused of
desecrating a holy book.
The B.J.P. needs the campaign in
Uttar Pradesh to go without a hitch, despite the party’s lead in the polls. The
party is trying to bounce back from the coronavirus’s second wave, which hit
after Mr. Modi declared victory over the pandemic and showed the country’s lack
of preparedness. Uttar Pradesh was hit particularly hard, with bodies of
suspected victims washing up on the banks of India’s sacred Ganges River.
While Mr. Modi, normally voluble,
has said little about the farmers, other leaders in his party have embraced a
language of force to rally supporters against them.
In Haryana, a state neighboring
Uttar Pradesh that is also governed by the B.J.P., a local official was
captured on video ordering the police to use violence to break up one
gathering. Farmers responded by breaking through police barricades outside a
government office. The tensions eased only after the government agreed to
investigate the official’s conduct.
A week later, in Uttar Pradesh,
Rakesh Tikait, a 59-year-old farm union leader, rallied tens of thousands of
farmers, declaring an all-out campaign against the B.J.P.
Earlier this month, farmers
gathered again in Haryana and surrounded the site of a planned visit by the
state’s top elected official, forcing him to cancel.
Days before the incident in Uttar
Pradesh, Ajay Mishra, Mr. Modi’s junior minister of home affairs, warned
farmers in a speech to “behave, or we will teach you how to behave. It will
take just two minutes.”
Outraged, a group of farmers stood
on a one-lane road in the village of Tikunia, carrying black flags they planned
to wave at Mr. Mishra, who was visiting his constituency with his son, Ashish
Mishra, and other party members.
The farmers received word that Mr.
Mishra’s plans had changed and started to disperse when Ashish Mishra’s convoy
came hurtling at them from behind, according to video footage and police
officials. After the jeep rammed into the crowd, the farmers attacked the
convoy with bamboo sticks and set two of the vehicles ablaze. By the end of the
day, eight people were dead, including three people in the convoy.
The farmers claim that they saw
Ashish Mishra, known to villagers as Monu, in the convoy and blamed him for the
incident. The minister has denied his family’s involvement. The police arrested
Ashish Mishra, saying he failed to cooperate with the investigation, along with
nine others in the murder case.
The victims’ families said they
have little hope of justice. “Long live Monu,” village walls proclaimed in
graffiti next to a brightly painted lotus flower, the B.J.P. symbol. The Mishra
family home, a sprawling compound hidden behind high walls and flowering
bougainvillea, hovers over shanties.
Opposition leaders have tried to
capitalize on the moment, but many were prevented or delayed from reaching the
victims’ families. Some, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a leader of the
Congress party, were detained.
“All I can say is if, as a nation,
we have a conscience,” she said, “then we cannot forget this.”
