Since November 25, hundreds and thousands of farmers have been sitting at the door of India’s capital to mark their protest against the Modi government’s newly passed farm laws. On Republic Day, they have been allowed to enter Delhi on their tractors for a protest rally.
The stories of this movement have been captured in Trolley Times, a four-page biweekly newsletter that was founded on December 18. Here are some excerpts.
The fourth war
Jassi Sangha
You can see an 85-year-old man roaming around at Singhu front with military medals on his chest. He is Amarjit Singh, resident of village Naino Kot, District Gurdaspur.
He fought in the first Indo-China War of 1962. He was captured during the war and returned to India after spending nine months in Chinese prison. In 1965, when the Indo-Pakistan War happened, he fought from Jammu to Satwari.
Later he took part in the war of 1972. Bapu ji retired from the rank of Subedar. He tells that soldiers and farmers have an intimate relationship. The farmers’ sons are serving on borders of the country and the farmers are fighting for their rights on the borders of Delhi.
Bapu ji believes that if we don’t fight today, our future generations will suffer because of these laws and condemn us. “I fought three wars to protect the country, but didn’t achieve martyrdom. This is the fourth war, we have to win, or we will sacrifice our lives for our rights,” he said.
Workers stand with farmers
Sangeet Toor, Jasdeep Singh
On December 26, a thousand-strong group of farm workers, including 450 women, arrived at Tikri on buses and mini-buses. “We were picking cotton and took two days off to come here,” Lal Singh from Maujiaan village told us.
When asked about their livelihoods, Bibi Charanjeet Kaur said, “We were already dead. Coronavirus affected the rice season. Now, we are faced with massive electricity bills.”
“Electricity bills will break our backs,” said Lal Singh, “So we are here with the farmers. If farming does not survive, neither will we.”
Some workers have come on their own. Jindu, a young worker from Ramuwala Kalan, arrived on his tractor purchased on loan finance. Another worker cycled all the way from Zeeray to the protest site. He told a television channel enroute in an interview that Guru Nanak had invited him, that Guru Nanak Sahib resides in Sangat (assembly of the devotees) and that he skipped his day labour to witness the presence of Guru Sahib. When the journalist offered him a ride in his car, the worker emotionally replied that he will get there on his own strength. Faced with these courageous “Guru Ke Bete”, the government has already lost the moral battle a long ago.
Bhagwant Singh Samaon, the state president of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha, had called upon the landless farm workers to join the struggle with the slogan, “Save your livelihood, Save the Land”. He said the workers had arrived to take part in the protest in numbers that far exceeded his expectations. This is because the farm bills do not just affect the farmers but are also an attack on the workers’ livelihood. The closure of the government procurement program will make the food grain more expensive. The workers understood this and joined the movement.
According to the workers, the slogan of “Kisan Mazdoor Ekta” (Farmer Labourer Unity) is limited to the stage – the unity on the ground level will take time to materialise. When the workers asked for higher pay for planting rice during the lockdown, they were faced with social boycotts. Whenever the workers demand their rights, especially those related to the Shamlaat (village common land, a third of which is reserved for Dalits), they are met with police complaints. This slogan will only become reality when the farmers’ attitude changes. Despite these differences, the farm workers are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with farmers.
The farmer is also a worker
Jaspreet Kaur
“Brother, I am a farmer of Bihar and do labour work in Ghaziabad,” Upinder Kumar told us at the Ghazipur protest site. During the lockdown, he lost his job. He said he was furious as well as sad. The government neither gave a good rate for his crop nor did it make any arrangements for food and other provisions during the lockdown. “No company gives a good price for the five bighas of crop,” Kumar said. “Sometimes the corn crop is wet and sometimes not of good quality, they say. These are only excuses. We can’t even make cost price. That’s why we have to become labourers in the city.”
Mehar Singh said, “I am a labourer and a farmer too. I come daily with my wife and my children to do service in the free kitchen.” Singh, also from Bihar, continued: “What farmer brothers are saying, it is in interest of everybody, nobody can understand this thing more than me. It is really important that the people of the city should understand these bills and their consequences, otherwise we will never be able to free ourselves from the fraud of this thief government.”
Why Kulveer Kaur could not protest
Sangeet Toor
Kulveer Kaur did MA in sociology. She poured her heart out to me. With a brown shawl wrapped around her head and neck, and sitting out in a temple courtyard in village Gharacho, she spoke to me from the heart. It was difficult for me to look into the eyes of this 23-year-old girl. She wanted to pursue BEd, but due to reserved category student fee hikes, she couldn’t continue her studies. After finishing up her MA through the distance education program, she helped her mother in the paddy fields this summer.
When I met her on November 25, she told me that she worked as a daily wage labourer now. “Do you go to the protests?” I asked. “We Dalits are a political fraction without privilege to act on our wishes. People will talk if I go.” Her mother told me that they only allow their daughters out after much consideration. “It becomes difficult to marry them off,” she said.
Kulveer told me that she wanted to go to the protests, but she had witnessed her mother and other women participating in the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee. They often had to visit police stations. Kulveer heard appalling accounts from them. “We possess only two things – Aadhaar card and this body, and we don’t even have full ownership of these,” Kulveer’s grandmother said.
To register their names in history, to mark their presence in a historical movement and then to return home for a decent life are privileges many of our sisters simply do not have. Their desire is their participation.
(Article courtesy: Scroll.in.)
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Below is another extract from Trolley Times:
How Women Became an Integral Part of the Farmers’ Protest
Women have largely participated indirectly in political struggles. Their direct participation in the farmers’ agitation is due to the efforts of the unions. Harinder Bindu is the state president of the BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) women’s wing. She has been fighting for the rights of the labourers and farmers for the last 30 years.
When I called her on the phone, she was getting ready for the day’s meetings. Our conversation took place during this hectic moment. Her family had received land in the 1950s, during the PEPSU Muzara movement, and today corporations eagerly await the opportunity to occupy it. She is determined to turn back this reversal of history.
Bindu assumed full organisational leadership of four districts during the initial months of lockdown. She readily undertook the establishment of new units and initiated meetings and activities. In this process, she never experienced that as a woman leader she isn’t taken seriously. In fact, the male members are proud to see an exceptional woman as a leader of their union, and the women are assured that their gender is not an obstacle to their advancement in leadership roles.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
Partnership
Months before the farm Bills were passed, the Ugrahan union had already begun organising meetings and committees especially for women in villages, blocks and districts. The block committees went from village to village to set up new units and to conduct training sessions for families so that the men would take up domestic duties when the women were away to participate in meetings. The women were trained according to their interests and confidence, and assigned responsibility at par with the men. The male union leaders were encouraged to include the women in their families so as to set an example for other union members to involve their families.
It is because of these efforts that women are prominently visible in this movement. Those women who are unable to attend due to household obligations, are contributing by making pinni sweets, knitting sweaters and preparing food. In addition, they are politically mobilising other women in their homes, neighbourhoods and villages. Compared to young men, there are certainly fewer young women/wives at the Delhi protest. However, women are actively participating in the movement on the ground in Punjab.
Political change
The women in the villages are now confident that no matter which government is in power, they will be able to find a solution to any problem on their own as long as they are united.
Earlier, people used to knock on the doors of the political parties in power, they used to plead. Now people have realised that political power is in their hands and not the political parties. The people understand who the Ambani/Adani corporations are, why the corporations want contract farming, and how contract farming will dispossess them of their land. The people recognise the corporate plot to control the nation’s natural resources and developed infrastructure, and how the corporate houses are buying off ruling parties . The people also understand that schools, hospitals and railways are collectively owned. The land and harvests are our own. The people have developed a sense of belonging to this collective wealth as well as a desire to protect it.
Differences
Men and women are seen as different in society. But we need to understand that men and women are not each other’s enemies; the enemy is the historically unequal societal structure. When we become conscious of this and become united, then we will also be able to change it. The union leaders’ commendable behaviour and interactions with women have established an example for the other members.
It is an accomplishment of the farmers’ protest that it has erased these historical differences. Women and men have chosen to unite against a common enemy. There are some families that are only represented by their women members in the protest, and now men do not question or doubt women who venture out on their own. Women and men do not have just one mode of relationship, and people have become aware of this as they struggle together and fight side by side against the government. The women have created a new space for themselves in their homes and their unions. Change that would take years has come about in a matter of months.
(Courtesy: The Wire.)
