Ground report: What I saw at Delhi’s Ghazipur border today

Since morning, according to an estimate, at least 15,000 tractors from all across western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana poured in at the protest site at Ghazipur, near Delhi-UP border. And it was not just an assembly of a few thousand disgruntled farmers. What I felt on the ground was an accumulation of long-brewing frustration against the regime and revolt of a deprived community against the government.

The farmers’ protests seem to have become a political movement now. Calling it just a protest would be undermining its strength and impact on Indian polity and history.

The scenes this Republic Day were indeed stark. On the one hand there was the official parade on Rajpath, with political leaders, Army officials, bureaucrats and ambassadors in attendance. And then there was the people’s parade, comprising the peasantry on the road leading to Delhi.

The road, which is otherwise known as NH – 24 was referred as ‘Janpath’, the people’s road, by the farmers. I felt that the division between Rajpath and ‘Janpath’ was widening, with two ‘republics’ at loggerheads with each other now.

At one corner of the highway, I saw thousands of industrial workers cheering for the tractor parade and chanting slogans against the farm laws.

‘What makes an industrial worker to come and protest in favour of the farmer,’ I asked one of them. “Both of us feel that opportunities have been snatched away from us. We both live at the margins and the future is bleak and dark,” he said.

After talking to the protesters and the public at large, one thing became very clear: they do not believe in this regime anymore. The trust deficit is tremendous.

Irrespective of what the Modi government does or the farmers’ protests gain in terms of their demand for a repeal of the farm laws, the awakening generated by the agitation has gone far and beyond it. Even farmers’ leaders accept that they had not expected such a big and spontaneous turn out.

And one should not miss the biggest take away, which is the diminishing of Brand Modi, which the BJP has heavily relied on to win elections across the country. People were laughing at a recent survey conducted by India Today which claimed that Modi was still very popular.

“If Modi is still very popular and loved by the people then why are lakhs of people protesting in Delhi?” quipped a BKU activist. Sooner or later, the energy of the protests is likely to take a strong political shape, capable of challenging Modi and alter the course of India’s history.