Fights of Fancy

Since the Narendra Modi government passed the three farm laws, for well over a year, the opposition to them has been one of the most visible and sustained protest movements in contemporary India. The protests, with their sweep and persistence, have come to carry the hopes of various groups, each with its own expectations. Many of these expectations have to do with issues that were never part of the movement’s mandate. The government’s vast propaganda machinery, which includes almost all of the mainstream media, has fed these expectations and, by exaggerating every misstep, worked to widen rifts between the movement and such groups. This has subjected the protests to standards that are impossible to live up to in practice.

The lynching of Lakhbir Singh at the Singhu protest site has once again put these dynamics, including the issue of caste, into sharp focus. Lakhbir, from a Dalit community of converts to Sikhism, was mutilated and murdered in mid October, allegedly by Nihang Sikhs who accused him of desecrating a religious text.

In light of this incident, it is worth reiterating what the protests do represent. Their target is the corporatisation of agriculture proposed under the new laws, whose impact I discussed in detail in the March issue of this magazine. The laws have met their strongest challenge in areas where agriculture is organised and sustainable under the current model of government procurement, which provides farmers a modicum of financial security. This is roughly the belt that extends from Punjab to western Uttar Pradesh, where land is largely owned and farmed by the Jutt Sikh and Hindu Jat farmers who have best adapted to the government incentives offered in the course of India’s Green Revolution.

Social relations in these areas reflect Indian reality, with inequities of caste in land ownership and power. The cadre of the farmer protests is neither from a social reality that is anywhere near perfect, nor protesting with a view to change this reality. What brings the protesters together is the realisation that the alternative economic model offered by the new laws is worse than the current situation—for Jutt and Jat farmers in particular, but also, since the rural economy depends on their earnings, for all rural communities. This conviction is borne out by the situation in states such as Bihar, where a form of these laws has been in place for over a decade with damaging consequences.