Day 60
#FarmersProtest
Republic Day Tractor March
Last night we were all relieved that finally the Delhi Police, under Home Ministry, read government of India, has agreed to cooperate with the farmer unions on the already declared farmer Tractor March on Republic Day. The relief is primarily because for the last 60 days, talks between the farmer unions and the government on the repeal of Farm Laws and legalising MSP have failed.
The agreement on the Tractor March between police and unions is the first thaw in the relationship between the farmers and the government. It is a welcome step. In the protest sites, among lakhs of farmers who are pouring in and readying their tractors, the relief is that they do not have to remove the barricades. The police will remove them.
However, there is one thing I want to flag with due respect to unions and their decision. We need to note that as a diverse, multi-layered country, 364 days a year we live by the Constitution. On one day, Republic Day, we want to celebrate our Constitution. We normally trust the government to celebrate it though display of military might. This year, the farmers, the citizens of the country, want to celebrate the day through their own march.
The Republic Day is a symbolic event. The permission to march on Republic Day is also a symbolic gesture because the farmers were already ready to march. The route of the march is also symbolic: Rajpath for government, Outer Ring Road for farmers. Both are keen on national security. The minimum distance between the two roads is 17 kms.
However, if you look at the map of Delhi and keep in mind the requirement that each protest site must return to their site, it is nearly impossible for all five sites to create a route map on the Outer Ring Road. Instead, the routes now agreed upon between unions and police are:
- From Singhu to Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar – Bawana – Kanjhawala – Auchandi order – KMP back to Singhu.
- From Tikri to Nangloi – Najafgarh – Dasna Border – Badli – KMP back to Tikri
- From Ghazipur to Anand Vihar – Apsara Chowk – Transport Nagar – Mohan Nagar – Ghaziabad – Dohai – KMP to Dasna Border – back to Ghazipur
- From Shahjanpur to Massani Barrage – touch KMP – return to Shahjahanpur
- Palwal route yet to be decided.
The route the police has agreed to for the farmers Tractor March does not even touch the Outer Ring Road at even one place. To me, this is a disappointment. Not because the Tractor March is not touching the Outer Ring Road but because the Tractor March is being relegated to mostly the outskirts of Delhi.
I have always seen Delhi in terms of concentric circles. The innermost, Lutyens, being most powerful. The outer circles being more and more distanced from the centre of power. The paths of the Tractor March are inhabited by poorer, labour class folks. These routes are narrower roads, far more dense and congested. If you look at election results, these areas are a saffron bastion. I am wondering if the home minister is deviously pushing the farmers into their lair. Though the police is cooperating, if unfortunately some violence happens, we know what happened with North East Delhi riots in February 2020. How the narrative was inverted.
That is why, it is of utmost concern that the Tractor March remains proactively peaceful. It travels, so to say, on the razor’s edge of non-violence. At the same time, since these are the areas it would be travelling, the articulation of the Tractor March should change from it being by and for farmers alone to being to also defend the Essential Commodities Act from being diluted through new Laws.
The Tractor March must consider raising the point that if we all do not protest the new Farm Laws, our Ration Cards will soon become useless. 67 per cent of India is dependent on the Public Distribution System for its monthly rations. When the ECA is diluted, Mandis are privatised, where and how will the Food Corporation of India, already under debt of Rs 2.65 lakh crore, procure food for India’s poor?
The Tractor March thus must be converted into an opportunity to spread the message of the imminent threat to food security of India to its poor people. May the Tractor March stay peaceful. Personally, I am on tenterhooks until January 26th, Republic Day.