[They received foreign and domestic
financial support, kept their camps organized and looked for ways to be seen
while trying to avoid violence.]
Now, his year away from his farm
and his family has finally paid off.
Mr. Prakash was one of thousands of
farmers in India who used their organizational skills, broad support network
and sheer persistence to force one of the country’s most powerful leaders in
modern history into a
rare retreat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said lawmakers would
repeal new agricultural laws that the protesting farmers feared would
leave them vulnerable to rapacious big companies and destroy their way
of life.
Their victory won’t help India
solve the deep inefficiencies that plague its farming sector, problems that
leave people malnourished in some places even as grain in other parts is unused
or exported. But it showed how a group desperate to preserve its hold on a
middle-class way of life could successfully challenge a government more
accustomed to squelching dissent than reckoning with it.
“It’s the power, it’s the force,
it’s the struggle, it’s the sacrifice of more than 700 farmers on these borders
which have compelled Mr. Modi to come down to repeal these laws,” said Darshant
Pal Singh, one of nine farm protest leaders.
The farmers, who camped out on the
outskirts of India’s capital, New Delhi, for a year, endured more than the
elements. A vicious Covid-19 second wave roared through the city in the spring.
The movement also experienced two violent episodes that led to the deaths of
protesters, one in New Delhi in January and a second last month in the neighboring
state of Uttar Pradesh, that increased pressure on the group to give up.
But the farmers’ insistence on
pressing their campaign, their support from a global network of allies and the
nonviolent nature of the protests proved to be keys to their success, their
backers say. Despite the deaths and a few other incidents, the farmer protests
were largely peaceful. Other recent protest movements, like one against a law
that fast-tracked
citizenship for some groups but excluded Muslims, were plagued
by violence.
The effort isn’t over yet. The
farmers have vowed to continue their protests until the government submits to
another demand, that it guarantee a minimum price for nearly two dozen crops.
Rather than retreat now, they sense an opportunity to push even harder on a
prime minister who is nervously watching his party’s poll numbers dip in a
string of states with elections next year. The government has said it will form
a committee to consider the matter.
India’s farming system still needs
to be fixed, a fact that even many of the protesting farmers acknowledge.
Initiated during a time of widespread starvation in the 1960s, the system
created centralized markets where farmers could sell their crops. Some of the
proceeds are funneled back to farming communities though infrastructure
projects, pensions and programs providing free technical advice on matters like
seed and fertilizer.
Today, that system has contributed
to inefficiencies: The government subsidizes water-intensive crops in
drought-stricken lands. Farming focuses on staple grains while more nutritious
crops, like leafy vegetables, are neglected.
Most of the 60 percent of the
country employed in agriculture survives on subsistence farming. While some
farmers enjoy middle-class lives, helped by modern aids like tractors and
irrigation, many others do not see a profit and are in
debt. With city and factory jobs hard to find in a country still struggling
with poverty, many farm children emigrate to find a better life.
Mr. Modi’s laws were aimed at
bringing more
private money into agriculture and making it more receptive to market
forces. Mr. Singh, the protest leader, said many farmers would prefer subsidies
over a wider range of output.
“The root of the agricultural issue
in India is that farmers are not getting the proper value of their crops,” said
Mr. Singh. “There are two ways to see reforms — giving away land to the
corporations, the big people, the capitalists. The other is to help the farmers
increase their yields.”
The movement started in Punjab,
home to a large community of Sikhs, the religious group, and some of the
country’s richest agricultural land. The protest leaders leaned on both to
organize and finance their yearlong demonstrations.
Financial aid, particularly from
Sikh temples and organizations outside India, has been critical to the
movement’s staying power, said Baldev Singh Sirsa, a farm leader.
Organizers leaned heavily on the
Punjabi Sikh diaspora. Big charities like Khalsa Aid International, a British
relief group, raised money for the protesters. Smaller ones, like the Midland
Langar Seva Society, also based in Britain, chipped in too.
The protesters made sure their
grievances were heard abroad. Supporters braved freezing temperatures in
Toronto and Montreal to hold signs outside Indian consulates in Canada.
Protesters marched across from the United Nations headquarters in New York. The
campaign worked: Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and Rihanna, the pop
singer, spoke in solidarity.
Organizers also cited the
philosophy of Sikhism, which emphasizes supporting victims of injustice and the
value of the community over the individual. The farmer movement’s sprawling
protest camps — which have fed and clothed thousands of people daily and
provided clean water, sanitation and even barber shops and tailors — reflected
the Sikh value of self-sufficiency, they said.
Members of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya
Janata Party, or B.J.P., labeled the protesters Khalistanis, a term referring
to separatists who years ago campaigned and even fought to create an
independent Sikh state. In response, protest organizers tried to quell tempers
even while seeking ways to make sure they were seen and heard.
That self-discipline was put to the
test at times.
In January, as India celebrated
Republic Day, a national holiday, some farmers
rode tractors over police barricades into New Delhi, leading to the
death of one protester. Political analysts declared the movement dead. But
organizers retreated behind the barricades, and resumed their peaceful protests
through the harsh winter, a devastating wave of the coronavirus, a scorching summer
and into the fall.
Then, in October, a B.J.P.
convoy rammed
into a group of protesting farmers, resulting in the deaths of four
protesters along with four other people, including a local journalist. The son
of one of Mr. Modi’s ministers is among those under investigation in connection
with the episode.
That incident, which came after the
protesters decided to shadow campaigning B.J.P. officials to draw cameras, may
have been a turning point. The B.J.P.’s poll numbers soon dropped in Uttar
Pradesh, where the deaths took place. Party officials began to worry that they
could lose the state in elections set for early next year.
A day after Mr. Modi’s surprise
announcement, the mood near Singhu, a village in the state of Haryana that
borders the capital, was somber. Religious music and political speeches blared
from loudspeakers across the makeshift village of bamboo huts, where people
hawked T-shirts and flags that said, “No farmers, no food.”
Outside one of the huts serving
free vegetarian lunch, Mr. Prakash, the farmer, described sleeping though cold
weather and rain next to a busy road, leaving his farm in the care of his
brothers’ children.
Mr. Prakash, who lives off his
pension from 20 years in the Indian Air Force, does not need the farm to
survive. Instead, holding on to the seven acres he and his siblings inherited
from their parents ensures they can maintain a middle class life in a country
where the vagaries of the economy often suck people back into poverty.
Mr. Prakash said that the family
farm had supported his ambitions, and that he wanted the same for his children.
“To save our motherland,” he said,
“we can stay here another two years.”
Hari Kumar contributed
reporting.
