Day 372

Toll 690

Toll

Yesterday, in the august Parliament, the nation’s agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said, his ministry has no record of those who have died at the farmers protest in the last one plus year. The question is: does the home ministry also not have any record? Does the government also have no record?

This is just like an RTI a few weeks back revealed the government has no record of the 11 rounds of discussion between farmers and government. Or the government said earlier there have been no deaths due to lack of oxygen in the pandemic second wave.

In fact, in these protests, one of the greatest documentation has been of the deaths at the protest. I say this because when we look at history, often numbers of dead in major events remain ambiguous. Many a times the state version differs massively from the people’s number. This time anyway the state number is 0 so in history the people’s number will prevail.

According to record keeping, through various sources – information in newspapers, through farmers unions, through individual reporting – checked and verified against each version, as on now the toll stands at 690.

In the last winters, the average was 2.3. In summers, in spite of pandemic which saw no special spike in toll, the average was 2.1. In the lean months of the protests, the numbers fell and now the average is 1.8.

All this documentation has been possible because of the efforts of primarily Anu Sandhu, supported by Amar Mander, Jai Singh Sandhu, Harender Happy, and Sajneet Mangat. Anuroop updates the blog mentioned below roughly once a week. Each entry in the blog mentions Name, Domicile, Occupation, Date of Death, Age, Cause of death, Place of death, and if possible name of Union.

This data is painstakingly vetted, duly noted and sacrosanct. It can be verified. It isn’t easy to have your mobile phone gallery full of pictures of the dead, it is very difficult to revisit deaths each day. Yet, the team persisted. I salute the diligence and meticulousness of the team that has created this record.

I know there have been numbers like 750 and 700 going around. If anyone has details of numbers over 690, please share them with Anuroop or Amar. But do check your information and make certain it is not already entered in the blog.

If the government is interested, it can cross-check this data and provide compensation to those we have lost in the protest.

Question is: is the government is interested at all? If the government is not interested, are the people of this country interested in paying homage to those who died breaching the wall of Hindutva, forcing the government to retract?

Blog link here …

Day 371

Toll 690

Terms of Reference

After the formal but undemocratic repeal of farm laws and some other demands being met, the issue of Minimum Support Price stands. The government has announced a committee to look into MSP and invited five Samyukt Kisan Morcha leaders to be part of it.

However, SKM says they are not clear on what would be the mandate and Terms of Reference of such a committee. Text book stuff: when any panel or committee is set up, the Terms of Reference need to be defined. The dictionary describes Terms of Reference as ‘the instructions given to someone when they are asked to consider or investigate a particular subject, telling them what they must deal with and what they can ignore’.

The reason I called the repeal undemocratic is because they were repealed as swiftly as they were implemented. In 8 minutes, without any discussion. In fact, if you notice PM Modi’s announcement to repeal on November 19th, it was done without the union cabinet clearance. The cabinet clearance came later. Through all these events – announcement, clearance, formal repeal – one aspect is clear: the government does not care and does not want to follow due democratic protests.

But then there are people, the protesting farmers, who are keen that a duly elected government follow democratic process. Hence the insistence on Terms of Reference of the committee of MSP. Let the government lay down the mandate in unmistakeable terms.

I sense that would be an uphill task for the government because no Sangh shakha has trained them for rigour, for due diligence, and to abide by the Constitution. In fact, the very raison d’etre of this government and its actions show they do not care for rules and believe a brute majority is reason enough to indulge in their fancies.

But the farmers are infinitely wise. They know how to de-weed their fields. They are now demonstrating their skills by asking the government to demonstrate its intention – a case where the people are teaching the government how to govern.

Herein is another lesson for democracy.