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Scenes from a Farmers’ Protest Camp: It’s Hard to See How the Modi Government can Shut This Down
Daljit Singh from Patiala says dramatically that he is very grateful to the Narendra Modi government.
Just when you think you have found one Bharatiya Janata Party supporter in the sea of humanity spread over 15 kms on the border of Delhi, he delivers the punchline: “I am grateful because this farm law has united us. We farmers were sleeping while the country was being sold off to corporations. Now we are awake and will protect all of you.”
There is no shortage of punchlines from the farmers who have set up camp and are encircling the national capital. They have so much determination and clarity of thought that the government knows it has to either step back and make big dilutions to the new farm laws or repeal them altogether.
The government has already offered to roll back some provisions, suggesting perhaps that the great farmers’ uprising is on the verge of compelling the Narendra Modi administration to eat humble pie.
This is an agitation of strapping farmers, led by Sikhs from Punjab, but functioning as a lightning rod for those from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and farther afield. This is a large force that arrived on tractors, jeeps, buses, four-wheel drives and cars to camp out for several months. Like medieval armies of the past, they have pitched elaborate tents that house the leadership of gurudwaras from Punjab and elsewhere.
Tarajit Singh is from a family that runs an influential gurudwara in Gurdaspur. He is enraged at the description of the movement as being run by Khalistanis. “They will call us tukde tukde gang [which aims to break India into pieces] or Khalistanis to discredit a movement that is about our agrarian problems,” he said. He added that he has refused to talk to those journalists who start conversations with questions about 1980s separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and Khalistan.
The head of a powerful gurudwara in Nanded, Maharashtra, has just arrived in a convoy and said that more participants from the region are on their way.
There is a fascinating intermingling of traditional Sikhs and long-standing activists, some with links to Left parties, who have worked on agricultural and labour issues for decades. But they are all speaking the same language about being sold off to corporate interests.
Jasbir Singh Piddi, vice president of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti, has travelled from Tarn Taran in Punjab and spoke of efforts by the government to divide the protestors into different groups by the government.
Things will drag on for a while, he said. Our people are still coming. Providing him support is a taxi operators association from Delhi, pitching in with a large langar (a free community kitchen) and many stump speeches about selling India off to corporations.
Everyone I speak to mentions the 2004 Swaminathan committee report on farmers and asks why the government has never implemented it. They know exactly what they are fighting against. Simply put, they say they would rather work with known middle-men in traditional agriculture markets than allow corporations sitting afar and dictate terms for the sector.
“It’s about self respect,” said Garvinder Singh, from Gurdaspur. “The government thinks we are fools.”
Besides the many magnificent men with their flowing beards who are now seen on television, there are many youth scattered all over the large camp-site on the highway that links Delhi to Sonipat, Haryana, the route to the elite Ashoka and OP Jindal Global universities.
Loitering around a large hookah were a group of young farmers from Haryana who laughed and said that they were now “wela” (with spare time on their hands) and could stay until April, which is when they would have to return to their villages to harvest the wheat crop.
Some distance away, some radical young trade union workers are also giving speeches and interviews. They had put up a sign on their tractor that says, “Godi media not allowed” (lapdog media not allowed).
This is the largest protest I have seen and the most well-fed. At every step, cauliflower is being chopped, bags of potatoes being carried and outstretched arms offer laddus, halwa and lassi. There are health camps too, the only place where volunteers are wearing masks.
The visual image that stays with me of a line of policemen on the border, helmets and bullet vests in place, while casually walking towards them is a jatha (an armed body) of Nihangs, traditional warriors, distinct in their blue turbans with their long swords and horses.
This is a significant protest because it’s not just about resisting new farm laws. It is from the fields and granaries of India that a strong articulation against big corporations is being made. Modi, Ambani and Adani are being critiqued robustly in the same breath.
It’s potent, it’s organic and it’s hard to see how the government can shut this down.
(Saba Naqvi is a veteran journalist in New Delhi and the author most recently of ‘Politics of Jugaad’. Article courtesy: Scroll.in.)
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‘The New Laws Will Kill Us’
Thirty-seven-year-old Pradeep Singh offered a meticulous breakdown of the amount of money he spends to grow rice on one acre of his farm in Haryana’s Jhajjar district.
He pays Rs 4,500 to hire 10 daily wage workers to sow the seed, Rs 3,600 to rent a tractor, Rs 1,200 for fertiliser, Rs 300 for urea, Rs 600 for insecticide, Rs 2,800 for pesticide, Rs 400 per worker to spray the pesticide and Rs 6,000 for 10 workers to harvest the paddy.
Finally, it costs him Rs 3,500 to rent a tractor trolley to carry the crop to the market, and Rs 2,000 for diesel for the journey.
For all this work, Singh says, he makes around Rs 10,000 per acre – an additional Rs 5,000 if the harvest is good.
“The common man does not know this,” said Singh, who lives in Mahandipur village in Bahadurgarh tehsil. “Even the government will not know this [process]. Ask the agricultural minister or the prime minister…or even the Haryana chief minister. The real farmer is sitting here in front of you.”
Pradeep Singh is among the thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh who have gathered at Tikri, on the Delhi-Haryana border since November 25 to demand that the Bharatiya Janata Party government repeal three new farm laws. They fear that the legislations will end the minimum support prices they receive from the government on key crops, leaving them at the mercy of corporations.
As the farmers made their way to Delhi, they faced water cannon, tear gas shells and police batons en route.
Hundreds of tractors and trolleys have occupied at least 5 km of the Delhi Rohtak Corridor at the Tikri border. The farmers say they have brought along food and supplies that will last them six months.
On Tuesday evening, some farm leaders were invited to meet with Home Minister Amit Shah, but the talks were inconclusive.
Earlier on Tuesday, Scroll.in spoke to three protesting farmers with small or marginal holdings about the economics of their operations and why they oppose the new laws.
Pradeep Singh
Owns two acres of land in Jhajjar district, Haryana
According to the 2016 Agricultural Census, 86% land holdings in the country are small and marginal holdings of less than five acres.
Singh earns a total of Rs 20,000 after six months of toiling on his two-acre plot, which would not be enough for him to support his family, he said, so he leases another 10 acres of land.
To get started this season, Singh took a Rs 7 lakh loan from a middleman. But in the end, he still had Rs 2 lakh of this loan outstanding. The lack of workers during the coronavirus lockdown made the harvest difficult, Singh said.
He was also hurt by larger dynamics: the economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran, one of the biggest importers of rice from India. The sanctions hurt farmers like Singh who sells his produce at Najafgarh in South West Delhi, 22 km away from his village.
“We sold a quintal of rice for Rs 2,000 but it used to be Rs 4,000,” Singh said.
As a consequence, Singh struggled to support his family and was unable to pay the Rs 5,000 fee to admit his five-year-old daughter to primary school.
But he had a more pressing worry. If the new laws are implemented, he may not be able to pay back the loan he took from the middleman even after the next crop cycle – even though the man will not charge him additional interest.
Singh explained that the new laws do not guarantee that the farmers will receive the minimum support price they now get from the government. Instead, they will be left at the mercy of private buyers.
“Suppose if small farmers come together to enter into a contract with one private entity and decide earlier on that they will grow potatoes and sell it for Rs 30 a kilo,” Singh said. “They give us the seeds and fertiliser and when the time comes for harvest, the corporations will come and buy it at the decided rate even if the market price is Rs 50. They will not increase it.”
However, he said, “if the market is down and the price is Rs 6 for a kilo, then they will bicker with us while buying. This will kill the farmers. Who will he go to? The SDM [sub-divisional magistrate] will not listen to the farmer.”
Under the new laws, disputes between farmers and buyers are to be settled at the level of a sub-divisional magistrate, not in civil courts.
“No farmer wants the middleman system to end,” Singh declared. “They [Centre] are giving us a lollipop, we will keep sucking on it but in the end we will suffer.
Gurpreet Kaur
Family owns 11 acres of land in Ludhiana, Punjab.
Gurpreet Kaur, a 48-year-old farmer came to Tikri on November 26 from Chakar village in Jagraon tehsil, in Ludhiana, Punjab. She was accompanied by her husband and two teenage children. In Chakar, she farms wheat, rice and vegetables on 11 acres of land. She said it takes an investment of approximately Rs 20,000 to farm one acre of land. This includes the cost of diesel, fertiliser, pesticide and daily wages of Rs 400 for 20 workers.
Once the harvest is done, Kaur said, the produce goes to a market 2 km away from the village where the wheat is sold through a middleman for Rs 1,880 per quintal.
“For us, our middlemen is good,” she said. “We are free of tension if we sell to him and he sells the wheat at a good rate.”
Kaur said that the Bihari workers employed on her fields had cautioned her about their experience after similar laws passed in their state in 2006. They “told us that these laws were against farmers”, she said. “They said the [state] government turned them into daily wagers.”
This year, Kaur said the harvest was difficult because migrant workers had gone back to their home states as a consequence of the Covid-19 lockdown. “The harvest spoiled because we did not have any workers,” she said.
She said that after six months of work, her family had earned around Rs 1 lakh after paying off their Rs 5 lakh loan to the middleman.
“Some do not even have this much,” she said. “We would not be here protesting if we were rich farmers. These laws will make us poorer.”
Kaur said that farmers from her village have drawn up a rotational schedule to come to Delhi for the protests. She was set to go home on Wednesday.
But she noted that the protests had been underway in Punjab since July. Over the past months, Kaur has joined farmers across Punjab to sit on rail tracks tracks to block passenger trains. “We would sit for the entire day…it is going on till today,” Kaur said. “We have shut all their [Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani] [petrol] pumps and stores in Punjab.”
Surjeet Singh
Owns five acres of land in Lehra, Punjab
Fifty-three year old Surjeet Singh came to Delhi on November 27 from Lehal Khurd village in Lehra tehsil in Punjab’s Sangrur district. He grows wheat and rice on the five acres of land that he owns.
He broke down his economics per acre. He pays Rs 4,500 to hire three workers from Bihar, Rs 2,000 for diesel for his tractor, Rs 2,000 for fertiliser, Rs 3,000 for pesticide, and around Rs 6,000 for workers to cut the harvest. His total expenditure over five acres is around Rs 1 lakh, he said.
This year, he joined with two other farmers to buy a second-hand tractor for Rs 3.5 lakh. It had a Happy Seeder machine that would allow them to cut up the crop stubble instead of burning it.
For a two-crop cycle, Singh takes a loan every six months to meet these expenses. “The private bank gives around Rs 1 lakh,” Singh said. “Once it is time for the harvest, we take it to the middleman, who transfers the money to the bank. There is not much left with us.”
If Singh reaps a good harvest, he is left with Rs 20,000 per acre after he has paid off his loans. In addition to the income from farming, he rears two buffaloes that earns him Rs 50 per litre of milk.
Despite the tight situation, he said farmers like him would be better off without the new laws. “A lot of farmers cannot deal with the banks directly,” Singh said. “Some farmers are illiterate and use only their thumb print as a signature to deal with the middlemen. The middlemen helps them put the money in the bank to pay the loan.”
Farmers in the village have an easy relationship with the middlemen in their market, Singh said. “We can even take Rs 5 lakh advance payment from them because we know each other,” he said. “They are like family. We would never call them bicholi [middlemen]. They are the ATM and bank for us.”
Under the new laws, small farmers would be exploited, Singh said. “The big businessmen will buy in bulk and we will be looted,” he said. At present, he sells his wheat for Rs 1,880 per quintal at the markets. “If these laws come then no one will buy it for even Rs 1,000,” Singh said.
(Vijayta Lalwani is a journalist at Scroll.in in Delhi. Article courtesy: Scroll.in.)
