When farmers accuse the Centre of being ‘Hum do, Hamare do’ Sarkar, we must listen

The Prime Minister may not be aware of the aphorism that politics is often said to be the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. But his and his government’s reaction to the farmers’ agitation appears to validate it.

Nor does the PM seem aware that a ‘committee’ is often known as a group of people who individually can do nothing, but as a group can meet and decide that nothing can be done. We have a long history in this country of committees producing nothing. But a committee or a commission remains the government’s favourite prescription and pastime for walking out of a logjam, for putting issues on the back burner or simply to delay taking decisions.

Farmers’ unions were therefore being smart when they turned down the government’s proposal to form a committee to look into their grievances about the farm laws. The farmers wanted the laws repealed and not amended or modified. They however were prepared to explain why they wanted the laws to be repealed. Between June, when the ordinances were promulgated, and September, when they became laws, the Government did not have the time to listen. Nor did they have the time when farmers launched an agitation in October. The threat that farmers would march to Delhi was taken lightly and now that for three weeks the farmers are freezing in the cold at Delhi’s borders, the Government is busy discrediting farmers and discovering their sources of funding.

The government did have five rounds of talks with farmers this month. And how one wishes those meetings were telecast live by TV channels. That would have let the entire country know where the government and the farmers stand on the issue. If Bhoomi Pujan or the ground breaking ceremony by the Prime Minister at Ayodhya or at the site of the new Parliament building can be shown live by TV channels for hours, surely a meeting with farmers is far more deserving to be shown live?

But the Government has such abiding faith in its own wisdom that it has shown no inclination to listen to the farmers at any time during the last six months. The Prime Minister himself has repeatedly asserted this month that agitating farmers are being misled by the opposition. His ministers have gone a step further and accused Maoists, separatists, communists, Congress, terrorists, Khalistanis and even Pakistan for instigating the agitation. Such an attitude clearly leaves no room for discussion.

The Chief Justice of India too this week offered to form a court-monitored committee to end the deadlock. The Supreme Court of India had earlier appointed a group of mediators to resolve the Ram temple issue at Ayodhya and then delivered a contentious, if not convoluted, verdict. A similar pattern seems to be unfolding again with the primary interest being to end the road blocks, which ironically have been put up by Haryana and Delhi Police and not by the farmers.

The issues before the Supreme Court are simple enough. Agriculture being in the State List, it has been argued, the Centre had no business to make a law for the entire country. The court has to adjudicate whether the Centre is right in claiming that because ‘Trade and Commerce’ happen to be in the Concurrent List, it could pass the laws. Farmers have countered this by saying that all Agriculture Marketing Boards were set by the respective states. It was the state government of Bihar which abolished them in the state in 2006. Therefore, the decision to modify or abolish them should also rest with the states. This is an issue before the Supreme Court, which must decide if the laws are violative of the federal structure.

The second issue which the Supreme Court must address is the question of peaceful protests. It is fashionable for fancy lawyers to argue that freedom cannot be absolute, that it has limits and roads cannot be blocked by protestors. Ordinary citizens must not be inconvenienced. But the road blocks at Shaheen Bagh and now at Delhi’s border were put up by the police, not by protestors. Haryana and Delhi Police in fact dug up roads, put up concrete slabs, mud and sand on highways to stop farmers. Farmers have been non-violent for the past three months. Don’t they have the right to protest peacefully in the national capital? That is what the court needs to address. Can the Government be selective and allow political rallies that suit it but not protests on the pretext of the pandemic ? These issues cannot be decided by committees or expert panels.

It is nobody’s case that Indian Agriculture does not require reforms or radical changes. Farmers having to sell rice at ten Rupees a Kilogram and a cabbage or cauliflower at one Rupee each in 2020, as has been reported from Bihar, highlight the need for minimum assured prices. But the track record of the private sector and the big corporate bodies so far in this country do not inspire confidence. They have neither been ethical nor have been very efficient.

To a large extent, their success can be attributed to hand-holding by the Government, policies tweaked to their advantage and capital or debt being made available to them at public cost. Farmers’ reservations therefore about the ‘two-men Government’ working for two crony capitalists (Hum do, Hamare do) cannot be dismissed lightly.