March 4, 2021

Tomorrow is Day 100 of the #FarmerProtests.

While on ground, the protests have many positives, they have rallied rural, agrarian India; they have been a bulwark to the Hindutva propaganda machinery; I continue to wonder about urban India’s engagement with them.

Please do not assume I am making silos or I am not aware of the role urban India has played in the last three plus months. Yet, I am deeply disappointed by how little that effort has been and I do not want to hide it.

Think about this: it took Europe 400 years to usher in the Industrial Revolution – from the Black Death (bubonic plague) 1347 to 1351 to say when East India Company arrived in India to steal our resources to feed its industry, Battle of Plassey, 23 June 1757.

In India, the Industrial Revolution lasted a mere 40 years from after Independence when Nehru set up big industry in the 1950s to Manmohan Singh opening up the Indian economy early 1990s. After that we moved to IT/ITES services.

Not that any such revolution ends before the next starts. The fact that more than 50 per cent India is still agrarian, is evidence that there are no fixed dates for revolutions to start and end. Yet, by and large this is the timeline.

That is why I wonder how distant we urban folks have grown from our rural roots in a merely two score years – one or two generations. Think about it. It is about each of us. Our roots – our responses.