The siege of Delhi: Farmers’ Gambit

Happy Singh did not look very happy. He was scowling and listening to a group of Delhi reporters recording their conversation with a farmer. He occasionally mutterer his disapproval and made faces.

“Don’t you trust the PM” asked a reporter, pointing out that the PM had said farmers had nothing to worry; that MSP and the Mandis had not been dismantled. The PM had essentially said that farmers had been taken for a ride. Misled. “Dekho Ji…,” the farmer talking to reporters launched on a long, convoluted explanation of the farmers’ demand.

Happy Singh grimaced and wheeled around. His eyes locked on mine and he blurted out, “Why, do you trust the PM? Pandrah lakh aa gaye (Have you received the promised Rs 15 lakhs?)” he asked mockingly. Happy Singh (typically Happy seems to be a fairly common name in Punjab) turned out to be a well-informed farmer. He claimed Narendra Modi in 2011, when he was the Gujarat CM, had demanded that MSP be made a legal right. It turns out that the Gujarat CM had indeed made such a claim.

He spoke of late Arun Jaitley opposing in Parliament FDI in retail trade and pointing out that big corporations had not made American farmers prosperous. He dwelt on Demonetisation and lockdown before asking belligerently, “Why should we trust the PM?” His mobile phone had clips of the PM making various promises to farmers, which he flashed one after another, sarcastically adding, “Our income has not doubled”.

Pointing to my mobile, he asks, “Jio?” and laughs loudly. It takes a while to register that he is referring to the Reliance Jio mobile connection. Reliance offered it free when it was launched and then began to charge for services. Happy Singh believes corporates cannot be trusted. “They have politicians, police, lawyers and courts in their pocket. You cannot fight them,” he explains before turning on the media. “Patrakar ho? Pagar kitna? Ek lakh? Bolne ka ek lakh, aur mehnat karne ka kya? (If journalists earn a lakh for blabbering, how much should farmers get for their toil). He walks away, a mocking smile hovering on his lips.

Happy Singh has come from Gurdaspur, 464 kilometres from Delhi. He took rides in jeeps, trucks and tractors. Most of the farmers camping at the Delhi borders with Haryana have travelled 200 to 400 kilometres, some even more, to reach here. The almost military planning and precision is evident. Most families have a member or two in the Army. Also, every other family has a member living abroad, which explains protests in UK, Canada, Australia and the US in solidarity, and the proficiency in English, which seems to have caught Delhi media and politicians by surprise.

Where are farmers from other states? Why is the agitation confined to Punjab and Haryana? Every newsman visiting the Delhi border seemed to have raised these questions, which were met with expansive wave of arms and claims that farmers from Haryana, UP and Uttarakhand were all there. But the sea of turbaned Sikhs made it look they were all from Punjab. Most of them were.

Most of the passenger trains are still not back on track, somebody reminds us. Had travelling restrictions not been there, farmers from other states too would have joined. Someone recalls the spectacular march of farmers to Mumbai a few years ago—when the farmers marched at night and rested in the day so as not to disrupt traffic and examinations.

“Farmers are agitating everywhere but TV channels do not give any cover age. In Punjab we have been agitating for over two months but the media have been sleeping,” is an accusation one hears everywhere. Along with the govt, the media, particularly TV channels, are singled out as the villain.

A visiting journalist asks if the Sikh ethos of ‘giving and community living’ have helped in putting up the massive show of strength.

But an even more compelling reason for farmers in Punjab and Haryana taking the lead is the high level of public procurement of wheat and paddy in the two states. As much as 95% of the paddy produced in Punjab and 70% of paddy produced in Haryana are procured by Food Corporation of India (FCI).

The corresponding share of procurement in UP (3.6 per cent), West Bengal (7.3 per cent), Bihar (1.7 per cent) and other states have remained minuscule. Indeed, paddy from both Bihar and UP are transported to Punjab and Haryana, where they were being procured by FCI this year at MSP of Rs 1,868 per quintal. In Bihar, it was being sold to private traders at Rs 1,000 or at a marginally higher rate.

What is more, the buffer stock of these two crops in FCI godowns is already two and a half times the prescribed limit. Expert panels like the Shanta Kumar Committee having recommended the gradual dismantling of the FCI, public procurement and the Public Distribution System (PDS), farmers fear they will in a few years from now lose the umbrella of MSP and procurement by FCI. They will then have to sell their crops to Ambanis and Adanis at prices that suit the corporates.

They are also suspicious of contract farming. The contracts will be voluminous and in English, they point out. The fine print will escape most of them. “So, we get into a contract to sell our produce at a certain price even before we start cultivating. If the crop fails for lack of rains, we will fail to deliver on the agreement. But if we produce a bumper crop, the companies can always find fault with the grain (too moist, too black, too broken, too small) and refuse to pay the agreed price,” explain a group. Farmers bear the brunt of both excess rain and drought, they suffer if they produce less and they also suffer when they produce more. Prices go up when crops fail but traders benefit from the price-rise. Prices go down when they produce bumper crops. In both cases, they suffer.

Farmers will not be able to take the companies to court for breach of promise or for arm-twisting farmers, they fear. “It is a win-win situation for them and a losing proposition for us,” adds Happy Singh.

The leaders are more vocal. When revolutionaries in Bengal began opposing the British, it was said that only Bengalis were opposed to colonial rule, recalls Yogendra Yadav. “They were fighting for country’s freedom but it was easy to label them. Similarly, Punjab’s farmers have waged a historic struggle on behalf of Indian farmers,” he tells an interviewer.

A quieter lot of farmers reflect that problems farmers face are different from one state to another. ‘One cap fits all’ approach of the Centre, they felt, would not work in a country like India. But there are also common grievances. Land, water and electricity are issues everywhere. And the govt’s track record has been dismal. The govt, farmers fear, is conspiring to end all subsidies on agriculture. Electricity tariff, which farmers get free in Punjab and at subsidized rates in many states, is all set to go up, they claimed. Water, storage and transportation are increasingly becoming expensive. And various laws are making it easier for industry, mining and commercial enterprises to take over farmland.

“We are neck deep in debt; our crops often do not fetch even the cost of production, our children do not have jobs, education and healthcare are now privatized and prohibitive…where do we go?” is a common refrain.

Here are good reasons for the trust deficit between govt and farmers. PM Narendra Modi has been claiming that farm laws had liberated farmers and they can now sell their produce anywhere in the country at prices of their choice. But farmers are quick to point out that both BJP-ruled UP and Haryana had been stopping grains from entering Punjab and Haryana. MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan also declared this week that MP would not allow grains from other states to enter it for sale.

The PM speaks of ‘one country, one market’ but his CMs speak in different voices and contradict him, say farmers. “How do we trust these people?”

The Agriculture Minister says that APMCs and Mandis will not be disturbed, a voice rings out from the back. “Why then has he abolished the taxes and fees charged by the Mandis?” The govt does seem to be contradicting itself. If taxes and fees can no longer be levied, then how do mandis sustain themselves? The structure is bound to collapse, a chorus of voices rise from the gathering.

The govt and BJP have badly burnt their fingers. Union ministers have said on record that they do not see too many farmers in the crowd. BJP trolls added to the sense of injury by derisively saying that ‘English speaking’ young men could not be farmers. Kangana Ranaut, the controversial actor who is a self-confessed Modi Bhakt, snidely tweeted that farmers were misguided and elderly women in the crowd could have been part of ‘rent a crowd’ for hundred rupees.

They only served to confirm what farmers have been articulating, that people in power have little under standing of farming and farmers. Their outrage is real. On Thursday evening as they impatiently waited for the leaders to return from talks in Vigyan Bhavan, they were animatedly discussing what the Haryana Agriculture Minister J P Dalal said in an interview. Foreign powers like Pakistan, which did not like the Indian PM, were instigating the farmers, he said.

The excited chatter is interrupted by someone raising his voice and the group falls silent to listen to him. He apparently informed the gathering of what the Karnataka Agriculture Minister B.C. Patil had reportedly said about farmer suicides. “Farmers who commit suicide are cowards. Only a coward who can’t take care of his wife and children commits suicide. When we have fallen (in the water), we have to swim and win,” Patil was quoted as saying.

“We gave the govt a two-month notice that we would be marching to Delhi. They ignored us. More than a month ago the Joint Committee (Morcha) of farmers applied for the use of Ramleela Ground in Delhi for our peaceful protest. They again ignored us. What do we do?” someone shouts. Several voices rise at once to question why Haryana Government and police dug up roads, built trenches, dumped sand and soil on the roads to stop the movement; why water cannons and tear gas were used on them, why they were caned…

Nobody denies farmers are in distress. Even the NCRB, the govt’s own public data bank, acknowledges that over 20,000 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide in 2018 and 2019. Farmers’ indebtedness is high and insurance schemes have helped farmers less and insurance companies more.

In 2016, the average age of an Indian farmer was 50.1 years, according to the Input Survey 2011-12 (released in 2016) by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. And while this generation of farmers is approaching retirement, the next generation is not ready to take up farming because of low incomes. It is hardly surprising because the Economic Survey of 2016 also records that in 17 states of India, the average annual income of farmers was Rs 20,000.

A majority of students graduating from agricultural universities switch to other professions. Only 1.2 per cent of 30,000 rural youth surveyed by non-profit organization Pratham for its 2017 Annual Status of Education Report aspired to be farmers. While 18 per cent boys preferred to join Army, 12 per cent wanted to become engineers. Similarly, for girls, who play a major role in traditional farming, 25 per cent wanted to be teachers.

The percentage of students in agricultural or veterinary courses around India amounted to less than half a per cent of all undergraduate enrollments, the report found, raising questions about the future of agriculture and about who will produce food for the millions.

The farm laws are seen as perverse. It is fine to argue that 50% of the population contributing just 15% of the GDP is unviable and makes no economic sense. It is also fine to plan to move people away from agriculture. But with no jobs in a shrinking economy and the govt so bankrupt that it is unable to fulfil its legal obligation to the states, the laws couldn’t have come at a worse time.

It is a political turning point because by forcing the govt to blink, farmers have sent out the message that arbitrary decision-making can be challenged and reversed. Farmers as a political force and constituency are expected to increasingly call the shots. And the movement has succeeded in making people finally sit up and take notice