Dear Friends,

personal: during these farmer protests, Yasser Arafath interviewed me and published the story in Malayalam in the magazine TrueCopy.

Posting the link to the Table of Contents of the magazine here. I know Malayalees are enterprising, I am sure those interested will find the story.

I am glad that as an honourary Malayalee, married into Kerala through Lakshmi Karunakaran, Kerala will now get a first-hand account of my people from Panjab. Achhan Madhavan Karunakaran read the 10-page story last night and told me it reflects my views accurately.

Please see here …

Facebook: December 8, 2020

The farmer protest reaches Day 13 and today is Bharat Bandh. The response from various parts of the country shows us there is something we need to understand about cultures of different regions in India.

The matter is rooted in history. Panjab-Haryana and in many ways Western UP has been a site for conflict for thousands of years. They have been the gateway to the Indian sub-continent for millennia.

Similarly, Rajputs, Marathas, Malayalees, Tamizh, north-east Ahoms, Nagas, Meitei and others have always been on their own borders of the Indian sub-continent. They have, from time to time, picked arms to defend themselves.

We people from the periphery of the Indian sub-continent, now nation, have a way of life which is vastly dissimilar from central Indian sub-continent. We know to defend ourselves. We know that to defend our lands, we need to be prepared for sacrifice. We do not seek wars or sacrifice, but we are prepared for it. That is the nature of the border, any border.
The texture of our blood is resistance.

We know, life is ephemeral, so is possession of land. That is why, when we have the land, we name it, we celebrate it. That is why the farmers at Tikri border to Delhi – one of the protests sites, have renamed spaces within the site as:

1. Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Nagar
2. Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar
3. Bibi Gulab Kaur Nagar
4. Chacha Ajit Singh Nagar
5. Shaheed Sadhu Singh Takhtupura Nagar.

The Press Gallery is named after Ashfaqullah Khan.

Who are all these people after whom these spaces are named? Google them. Learn some history.

The farmers who have come with their own food, supplies, warm clothing and bedding, even some furniture, have established a city within a city. It is fascinating how they are using culture and history – pre-British, British, post-British – to challenge the mighty establishment.

That is just how we are. All of us who resist hegemony.

Note: apologies if you feel I am making broad sweeping statements but do notice stereotypes also have basis in history. Especially, positive stereotypes.

In the last post we discussed how the arthiya – commission agent – being villainized now is not the real villain. Even if you want to consider them so, they are within the 2.5 per cent of the MSP.

So, who are the real villains? Look at it from your own point of view as consumers.
Extract from PANJAB: Journeys Through Fault Lines, page 50-52

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Look at farming from our dining table point of view: What do we pay for the wheat flour and what do the farmers get for the wheat they grow? The MSP for wheat in 2015 was Rs 1450. But that does not mean every farmer sells his produce for that much. Or that the MSP is a commitment to buy. It means the MSP is a guidance figure. Though the heavily mechanised farming process in Panjab aspires to work with factorylike precision, the quality of wheat or paddy, the time of sowing, the watering of fields, the sprinkling of chemicals, the time of harvesting, the rainfall, the moisture content, the probability of disease, the grade of produce, all play a role in how the rates of grain are fixed. The wheat could vary in moisture content and quality. The produce could even be rejected for being surplus, for lack of funds, or because private players corner produce and do not release it to government agencies. In the farmer’s ecosystem, money rarely changes hands, as almost everything is through a system of slips and credits, and rotates around the arthiya, the commission agent, who serves as the farmer’s conduit to the market and the local bank, extending loans and credits, often at short notice.

Calculating backwards from Rs 1450 would mean Rs 14 for a kilogram, much lower than the Rs 45 per kilogram of wheat flour that we pay — three times lower. In this gap of what the farmers earn and what we pay lies the ordinary man’s complicity in the disaster of the agrarian sector.

The argument thus is not about increasing the price of food but understanding where the Rs 31 (the difference between Rs 45 and Rs 14) goes. It is this Rs 31 per kilogram that we pay for agro-processing industries located in other states, transportation across the country, above the basic procurement price of wheat that gives the corporates control on governments by bank-rolling political parties.

Governments, usually beholden to corporates for election funding, remain under the influence of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which pushes for a free market, thereby complicating any possible government-subsidised arrangement for the farming sector. This is not a crisis of Panjab or India alone. In the last few years, in South America, Europe and Africa, farmers have been protesting the lack of state support — an indigenous system to maximise their trade potential.

For the last decade, political parties have been talking of implementing the Swaminathan Commission report on the basis of which they will ensure that the MSP doubles by 2022. But the report also calls for land reforms by redistributing ceiling-surplus land, substantial investment in irrigation through canals, drainage and the million well scheme, soil testing laboratories, a cap on interest rates levied on farm loans, primary health centres and suicide prevention facilities, and a food guarantee programme through local self-help groups, and so on. This second set of proposals is rarely spoken about. Whether it is professors, thinkers and commentators, everyone is clear: small and marginal farming is untenable as it does not produce enough income. It needs to change, but to what form? Should corporates or landlords buy the land and dispossess the farmers? There are no clear answers.

It is no wonder then that activists and ordinary farmers and labourers consider Panjab the ‘food-producing colony of the nation’ faced with myriad problems that barely register on the national consciousness. This non-listening, non-acknowledging violence of the state through colonial capitalist practices based on neo-liberalism has paralysed Panjab’s agriculture.

*

Adding an observation. Test it.

In a deficient monsoon year, when exactly in the cycle do we learn that it will be a deficient monsoon? In the last decade, each year I have noticed the Metrological Department of India always projects a healthy monsoon in April/May. When the South-West monsoon does not make appearance on Kerala coast towards end of May, they call it minor glitch.
The Met Dept admits to failed monsoon by mid-August. Ask yourself why?

Does the Met Dept not have sophisticated instruments to track? Are satellite reports not available? How then does Japan know in January itself about the quantum of rain in Indian sub-continent that year?

This is where agro-processing industries come in. They are precious on the Sensex. If they tumble, lakhs of investors will loose money, stock indices will go down. That is not good optics for a country where all growth in recent years is only on the Sensex and not on Human Development Indices. This is not good for political parties who are funded by the agro-processing industry. This year India is 97 out of 107 countries on World Hunger Index.

Ask yourself what answer can we give to the north Karnataka farmer who plants crops and waits for rain and monsoon fails? Or to millions of farmers across India in various states? We need to ease the hold of the agro-processing industry on the ‘Farm to Table’ food chain.
By removing ECA, the new Farm Laws actually encourage unlimited stock-piling by this section. By allowing corporate farming, the new Farm Laws allow encourage a vice-like grip by this section on the agrarian sector. It is the agro-processing industry who are the real middle men.

Both suffer, farmer and consumer.

Dear Friends,

One of the biggest argument the government is putting forth for new Farm Laws is that it will eliminate middle-men. These middle-men, per the government are the arthiya – the commission agent and money-lender. The Farmer Unions are defining the arthiyas as ‘service providers’.

Here is a peek from my book that takes you to the ground and explains the phenomenon from what I experienced.

You decide.

I am very glad Scroll has carried the excerpt from PANJAB: Journeys Through Fault Lines. Last year, when the book came out, we issued limited excerpts and I had to sadly refuse Arunava Sinha, whom I actually like and respect a lot. I am glad it came out now when it is directly related to the argument against Farm Laws.

Dear Friends,

a protest really settles when it is able to laugh. Laughs release anxiety, promote warmth. While there is a lot of laughter and warmth on the borders of Delhi at Singhu and Tikri where protesters are gathered, in cyberspace it happened when a few days back Panjabi singer and actor got into a twitter spat with Kangana Ranaut, the middle-class girl, everyone’s favourite, who has now become a Hindutva troll.

Daljit gave it back well, with humour, no rough language, but very effectively. The Telegraph decided to run a story on it and quoted me in their piece.

Please see here …

Dear Friends,

my thanks to Angshuman Choudhury from Eleventh Column who helped me articulate the larger socio-political-economic aspects of the ongoing Farmer Protests against the draconian Farm Laws.

In this 40 minute talk, we answer the spin attempted by lapdog media, the apathy of the depoliticised liberal urban middle class, the COVID19 threat, and how these protests by farmers of north India challenge the arrogance of the Hindutva Project’s propaganda machinery.

Please listen here …

Facebook: December 3, 2020

Dilli-wallas, media, folks who wish to support the farmers protesting the draconian, undemocratic Farm Bills are stunned that the protesters do not look malnourished and needy. The protesters are in fact treating all who reach the protests sites to langar, insisting that citizen allies, supporters are all well fed. You see, these protesters, in fact, most of rural India is like that: gracious, warm, and hospitable.

Folks who wish to support the farmers are also stunned that the protesters do not need their material or cash help. For urban folks this raises the question: why do these farmers in track pants, with big vehicles, some even speaking English, not need anything from us? How can then we do something? What can we do?

These are good questions.

For answers to these, my friends, we need to do some homework.

We need to question what exactly is our idea of a protester? Why should protesters only be poor victims so that by participating a bit through cash or kind we can feel assured we are in solidarity with them or their cause?

Let us break it down: the beginning of all civilizations is in agriculture, then comes industrialization, and then services. None of these stages end for the next stage to begin. If a society moves to industrial, it does not mean agriculture has ended. It just means, the society has started focussing more on industry. It also means the society is somewhat taking the primary stage of civilization – agriculture – for granted. The question then is, is the stage taken for granted – agriculture – steadily doing well?

Now, through accident of birth or through personal or familial effort and often through caste, we find ourselves at a later stage – say a call centre job (service). When we have such a job, our income is assured. We can buy what we want or need. We stop caring about how say a sack of wheat flour, or a new gadget, is produced or manufactured. We stop asking questions if those spheres of civilizations – agriculture or industry – remain fair. We start believing that money is the primary token of exchange. The more we earn, the more agriculture and industry will serve us.

These protesters are rejecting money. Therein lies our primary shock and their great advantage. They are rejecting money because they already have whatever money can buy – food, warm clothes, and so on. They have travelled from Panjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, now Gujarat and Maharashtra, prepared with what they need for the next six months – the chilly winters. They have come with tractors and trollies filled with rations, bedding, even some furniture.

Urban India, they do not need what your money can buy. What they need is your solidarity. What they need is that you question why a popularly elected government takes your vote and screws you.

The protesters have come to camp. This is where we need to learn whether a protest is a dharna or a morcha. (Thanks Komal Jb Singh for mentioning this critical aspect.) A dharna is when protesters present their demands to ‘powers that be’ and ask to be heard. A morcha is when protesters assert themselves and challenge the ‘powers that be’ to face them.

The protesters rejected Burari grounds because to win against the government, they know that the choice of the site for the morcha has to be of one’s own determination. In Burari, the government would have surrounded them. Here they have gheraoed Delhi.

Morcha is when you are prepared to take it for long. Morcha is where langar is prepared by the people, served to whoever comes, including the police. Go, join the protests, by blessed by the langar. Dilli, the annadatas have come to your door. Come, stand with them, against the government’s draconian laws.

A morcha is not bound by time, but by the purpose of the cause. In opting for the morcha approach, the protesters are inspired by Panjab’s valorous history. When the Sikh Gurus used to go to war, they used to put up morchas – ready for the long haul.

That is why, to me, this is now a battle between seven years of current Hindutva government’s propaganda machinery (which is all they have) versus 700 years of Panjab’s battle history with Delhi.

The farmers just made curd from milk. They are are now settled in their camps. Which means, the vigil has begun. Panjabi has the same word for milk curdling and a vigil – Jaag.

Dear Friends,

Last evening I spoke to Arfa Khanum of The Wire Hindi on Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau raising concern about farmer protests in India against the draconian Farm Laws.

I urged us – as India – to look within ourselves and ask why such comments come up every now and then? I also mentioned nowhere it happens that a PM of an independent nation goes and campaigns in another country for its leader’s re-election. I spoke about the need to nuance the 100 year old term Khalistan and how now it is about human rights. Yet, the irony is now India has itself become Hindu Rashtra.

The discussion is short, we could not get to the actual protest but I did put on record that at present 7 years of Hindutva is challenged by 700 years of Panjab rising against Delhi.

Hindi. 22 minutes. Please listen here …

Note: I am being massively trolled for this in right-wing Hindutva circles.

Dear Friends,

Over the past few years, there have been times when lapdog media has misrepresented Panjab. At all such junctures, Aditi Sengupta at BLink gave me space to put out Panjab’s point of view.

This is why, when yesterday Shriya Mohan called me, we spoke at length at what is going on. I am so glad she has taken the time, done the leg-work, and done this comprehensive story capturing the ethos of the struggle.

Please read more here…