Dear Friends,

On Republic Day night, Manpreet Dhindsa Sahota interviewed me for RedFM Canada on the Tractor Parade on Republic Day. In Panjabi.

Please listen here…

Day 62

#FarmersMarch

Test of the Republic.

Today is indeed a historic day. The question is: will the history that will be written today the same as of last 73 years or will it be a day the nation recognises itself as it citizens and not just its government. For context, the Independence Day that we all celebrate every year, draws a lump to Panjab’s throat (and I assume Bengal’s). We do not say it, yet our hearts break. For the day the nation considers itself free from foreign British rule, is the day that marks the loss of over 1 million of our lives, 14 million displacements in east and west of India – the Partition.

India’s birth was indeed bloody.

Similarly, today the farmers are marching to assert their right to celebrate the Constitution. They are asserting their presence in the making of the nation but are clear that they are not interfering with how the nation celebrates it through a parade of military might. We have been hearing about these intended celebrations since January 2. On January 17 the route was declared by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha – Delhi’s Outer Ring Road.

Yet, suddenly, three days back, the SKM agreed to a route which surprised us all – on the outskirts of Delhi. Given how peaceful the protest has been last 62 days, in fact 100 days in Panjab, we all fell in line in the larger, greater good. Yet the nagging question did not leave our minds: why? Why the compromise? Are we not in Delhi to challenge the government? to push for complete repeal of Farm Laws, the Republic day, though symbolic, is similar? In any case any nearest point from Outer Ring Road to Rajpath is 17 kms. What possible disturbance can the farmers Tractor March cause? I do not get the middle path argument. When government knows its Laws are wrong, it would be dignified to take them back. When government recognises its citizens are important, it would not interfere in their freedoms to celebrate the Republic Day.

Since the day before, and through a speech yesterday, one Union from Panjab, not part of SKM, but which has been operating independently, is part of 41 negotiators with the government, has asked this question openly and declared they will march on the Outer Ring Road.
The Majha based Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee declared they will march independently on the pre-declared, by SKM, Delhi’s Outer Ring Road. They gave an open call to everyone to join. Those who wish to demonstrate they are here to assert their right as citizens of the nation and those who wish to keep seeking compromises with the government.

KMSC leader Satnam Singh Pannu emphasised that these compromises in the ‘interests of the nation’ have never benefitted the farmers, the rural, the real India. He said the anger in farmers is against decades of mal-governance by multiple governments, right from the time of Independence, now harvested by Modi through the Black Farm Laws.

The place where the two marches – SKM and KMSC – will diverge and possible conflict could happen between the police and KMSC is 10 kms from Singhu, at Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar – Mubarka Chowk. This is where national highway 44 touches the Outer Ring Road. Here SKM wants the March to proceed rightwards towards Bawana, outside Delhi. KSMC will ask its union and those who act on their call to turn leftwards towards Azadpur/ISBT, into Delhi. Last night, police reinforced this site: dug trenches, erect barricades.

KMSC has declared their march will be peaceful and disciplined and if the state exerts violence, they will not retaliate. Instead, they will take the blows or bullets, lay down their lives but those killings will reveal the government’s real intention behind the Black Laws – that the government is anti-people.

KMSC has started its march at 8 am. In some minutes from now, KMSC will reach Mubarka Chowk. They are ahead of the Singhu/SKM’s Tractor March. If the police blocks them, exerts violence, there will be crowding and SKM folks too will not be able to go on their planned route.

Let us see if the nation considers its farmers its honourable citizens or exerts violence. If today remains peaceful, I will wish all the Republic Day. Else, I will agree, with what Panjab has deeply sensed for decades: ‘we are the food producing colony of India’.

“Land has a big role in the lives of peasants,” Manjit Singh said. “Land is their social status in the village, their bargaining power at political level, their source of income and survival, and cultural reality. For farmers, land is their lifeline and not a commodity like it is for urban folks, who buy and sell flats and plots. It is part of their kinship relations, their organic social life. For land, they will become martyrs.”

Dear Friends,

When I reached Delhi end of December to pay homage to the #FarmersProtests, Hartosh Bal from Caravan and I spoke. He said, ‘Aman, now that you are here, please visit the sites and tell me the anatomy of the protests.’ Since then, I have been working on this piece. I try to articulate the body, the mind, the heart, the arms, the legs of the protest – though not literally.

The protest is so wide, that one article or even a book cannot encompass everything. Yet, with my editor Surabhi Kanga, we have tried. We put out one piece last week. Here is the next one with pictures by the excellent Shahid Tantray, Randeep S Mdk.

Note, right now, the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee is asking the police why isn’t it allowing the Republic Day Tractor March on the earlier route: Outer Ring Road? They have announced they will march on the Outer Ring Road – absolutely peacefully.

In the piece, I also explain how the KMSC and BKU-EU, who are not part of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha work. Why it is important for a protest of this size and nature to have a decentralised leadership. How such leadership works to the advantage of the agrarian sector that subsequent governments have neglected for the last half century.

Sorry, this time the farmers are not here to compromise. The state has neglected them for very long. The protests are their ‘hond di ladai’ – battle for existence. This time the state better address their demands: repeal the Farm Laws, legalise MSP.

Happy Republic Day!

Please read here …

Day 61

#FarmersProtest

A day before the Republic Day Tractor March, at boiling point, water in the pan will bubble a lot – hopefully not spill.

Remember, had the government repealed the Farm Laws, all this would not have been necessary. The government is testing the people, they will respond.

A big question is on trollies not being allowed. Personally, I am unable to see a tractor as a solo vehicle. Not that it is not, but what is a tractor, out of the farm, without its trolley?

Yet, imagine the logistics.

More than 1 lakh tractors on the roads for 24-36 hours or more. Each route is 70 to 80 kms. It is cold, it will be windy, the route is unfamiliar, has bends, the drivers will need breaks. Then, unlike Rajpath cleared of regular traffic, on these roads on the outskirts of Delhi there will be some traffic. These roads are also narrower than Outer Ring Road, as asked by Unions earlier.

With trollies we will slow them down even further – 48-72 hours! Even without trollies, tractors will need to rotate drivers in say 4-6-8 hours shifts. In any case there will be tableaux depicting the farmer’s stories, historical scenes on trollies. It is Baba Deep Singh’s birth anniversary tomorrow. There would be aid and relief material on trollies.
The farmers on the Tractor March would need food – are being asked to carry pinnis and dry fruits – they will need loo breaks, some langars will be arranged, some machinery could breakdown, hopefully not, but some possible health issues – ambulances are being arranged. These are huge logistical challenges.

The farmers will certainly rise, but before we critique just project the ground reality of the Tractor March in your minds.

Chardi Kala!

From discussion with Sukhjit Singh.

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.

Day 58

#FarmersProtest

Disgusted with editorial after editorial, and high flying commentators saying government has ‘seen’ merit in #FarmersProtest, urging the farmers to please go back, promising that the necessary will happen.

Yeah! Right.

Until now, for two decades, the government did not see reason when 3 lakh + farmers and labourers committed suicide.

For three to four decades, the government did not see reason when the Green Revolution states dealt with the aftermath of the chemical, mechanical model of agriculture.

What exactly is the locus standi of these editors and so called experts when political party after political party betrayed the rural, agrarian sector of the nation – its vast multitudes?

Now that the farmers have trapped the government, they declaim the government has seen reason. Where were they when for months the government was saying farmers do not understand the Laws, farmers are misguided? What hypocrisy of narrative!

Thank you very much, farmers do not want to listen to you ivy league MBA types. You lie when you say ‘the necessary will happen’. You have sold your souls, lost the trust of the people.

Just shut up!

Day 58

#FarmersProtest

Trust Deficit

Whatever be the points of view of individual farmer unions, glad that they all reached a joint agreement today over the government proposal to suspend the Farm laws for 18 months and form a smaller committee to discuss changes to Laws.

The farmers rejected the proposal. They remain firm on their resolve: repeal Laws, implement MSP.

The Republic Day Tractor March is on, as announced.

The suspension of Farm Laws was a ploy.

- The government had only said they will file an affidavit. They did not say they will stop the private players from building silos and warehouses, and entering food retail business.
- 18 months would have been July 2022, just the right time to begin preparations for next general elections. The BJP would have played the farmer card to get elected like it did in 2014. Then betrayed the people, like they did after 2014.
- The BJP would have thrown all its might and money to break the unions, buy out the leaders, compromise the struggle.

The point really is trust deficit. Farmers have been betrayed by the Congress and the BJP. They have seen the courts unable to push governments to implement the Swaminathan Commission Report.

In such a scenario, expecting farmers to vacate the protest on the words of some ministers when even promises written in manifestos have not been implemented is to misjudge the intelligence, ingenuity and memory of the farmers. The BJP has no idea who it is dealing with. Farmers are children of the soil. They know what they are doing. Sadly, the government seems to not know what it is doing.

The kind of mobilisation the nation is seeing this time is nearly impossible to mount again and again. This unity is the real strength of the protest. It is must be maintained and amplified.

Solidarity!

Day 57

#FarmersProtest

Yesterday, on Gurparb, our PM of ‘Abki Baar Trump Sarkar’ fame – the only elected leader worldwide to campaign for another leader in another country – trolled himself twice. Once, while wishing everyone on the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh and second by wishing Biden upon taking the oath as US President.

Guru Gobind Singh stood for justice and equality. The current government does not stand for those values. Instead of lip service to the Guru, the government could at least have considered that 145 people have already died in the protests.

How many more does it want to kill?

As far as the US, since a brutal state needs a veneer of civility, Biden and Harris will provide that. In the last few years, the US continued to be what it was, but all that had gone missing was that the naked entitlement of white America was revealed to the world. Now it will seem more mixed race but otherwise things will continue as were: wars around the world, some measure of stability inside the US, neo-liberal policies in place.

Coming back to India, where farmers pose the greatest threat to neo-liberalism, with 26th January, Republic Day approaching, we are placed on a razor’s edge. It is good that at least this time – unlike when they formed the Committee full of pro-Law supporters – the Supreme Court is not interfering. After all the bending to government it has shown in recent decisions, the Court is trying to redeem itself by asking the Delhi police to decide on the huge Tractor March planned by the farmers. This is how it must be. The simple issue this poses is whether the BJP is only good to win elections, form governments, acquire power or does it have any responsibility towards the people of the nation?

The Delhi police comes under the home ministry. The current home minister’s only abilities on display until now are divide and vitiate the nation. Let us see if he can, for once, decide to not block the farmers. After all, it is the right of the farmers, of the citizens of the nation, to celebrate the day the Constitution came into effect. A Constitution the government has violated when making the Farm Laws. In that sense, it is the people who are upholding the Constitution now, not the government.

Given the recent statement of the IMF head in support of the Laws, it is obvious that beyond the big business interest the government has fulfilled, it has the backing of powers who decide India’s stature in world economy. Which basically means: credit rating and ability to borrow loans not real welfare of the people. If the government goes back on the Laws, it could hurt India in terms of foreign investment. That is why this protest by an estimated 1 million people on January 26th on the outskirts of Delhi is one of the greatest stands in history.

The proposal by the government to farmers yesterday is another gimmick: hold Laws in abeyance, form a smaller committee to discuss. A movement like the current one has been unprecedented and the long wait in the harsh winter is irritating the protesters, especially the youth is bursting with energy. The government knows this and instead repealing the Laws, making MSP mandatory, solving the issue at hand, it is playing on the nerves of the union leadership. This is a clear indication on how far the government is from the people.

I hope the union leaders emerge stronger from today’s meeting amongst themselves. A peaceful farmer march on January 26th will not be a veneer but our civic responsibility.