Briefly discusses the political ramifications of the farmers' agitation in India

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SUBALTERNS' SATYAGRAHA TO NEW INDIA
Shantanu Basu
The ongoing farmers' agitation on Delhi's borders is no more about the controversial Farm
Acts. It is fast transmuting into a challenge from 90% of India's population to the privileged
10% that have historically written India's post-1947 history. It is no longer an issue of state
arbitrariness but an emerging broad-based alliance ranged against a government whose
policies are dictated by private corporate interests, something that has not happened in the
past.
If the media has been typecast as active saviours of the status quo (e.g. by stifling reportage
of massive farmer protests across India and BJP-ruled states for stoppage of farmers at the
borders en route to Delhi), law enforcement agencies are not just supine but represent, along
with voluble members of the ruling party are viewed as Devils Incarnate that seek to stifle
legitimate protest by brute force.
It does not remain a Punjab v. Centre issue any longer; it is rapidly escalating as dominant
and well-off lower castes spread across the Hindi heartland supplement and democratise this
movement. The realization that caste and community-based parties are no more than active
collaborators with the upper caste parties and together are responsible for the impoverishment
of the masses has finally dawned on India's subaltern classes. An open challenge has
therefore been thrown by common people to the privileged elites by a movement that is
seemingly united on primarily economic basis, politics bereft of caste, communal and blindly
copied/faux ideological leanings.
This movement is no longer confined to Delhi; Tikait just moved it out to Haryana; Punjab is
already there and other states are following in rapid succession. This amplifies the challenge
in the Hindi-speaking heartland that determines the winner of Raisina Hill. Nor is it confined
only to farmers since 15-20% of India's urban population too have strong agrarian connects.
Like police and defence services, these people also serve in both public and private sectors
and are adversely affected by the new Labour Code, CPSE & Railway privatization, etc. and
therefore, have adequate incentive to join this movement in an organized manner.
The movement signals the demise of a political system skewed in favour of the upper castes
that are viewed as leeches and parasites while the hard working Indian farmer remains
indigent, owns an average 2-3 hectares of land against whose security few FIs will lend funds
to them, vice-like grip of moneylenders, most of which are upper caste ruling party
politicians and corrupt civil servants, massive corruption in agri-input subsidies, etc.
The movement protests a pernicious social system that relies entirely on money-buying
patronage and resultant exclusivity by deprivation of the vast majority of the working class.
It is an eclectic mix of several -isms but very focused on the need to replace the existing
political system that perpetuates odious caste and communal differences and seeks to 'buy off'
the masses with peanuts like power subsidy while leaving two-third of the nation severely
deprived . In effect, the legitimate bargaining power of the working classes is mortgaged to a
privileged upper caste elite that periodically circulates in power (remember Pareto & Mosca's
rotation of elites theory in the 1930s) by erecting and sustaining artificial barriers like caste
and community. Economic deprivation, past and future, is the result of this mortgage. Hence,
the need for change, farmers feel.

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While the ruling regime has confined itself to hurling innuendo, party saboteurs, anti-national
labels, vacuous invective on clearly collaborative media channels, and an obduracy to repeal
the three Acts, the farmers have remained steadfast in their basic demand. The end result is an
unprecedented mass mobilization against a historically aggrandizing and brutal elite that is
reminiscent of Gandhi's satyagraha and the electrifying effect of the Dandi March (not yet a
century before).
What is even more interesting is that this movement does not question the legality or sheer
unconstitutionality of the Acts; all it seeks, by implication, is state stewardship of an legal
and rules regime that is equitable to both buyers and sellers, interim financial assistance and
state legal protection and enforcement from avaricious corporate entities, security of farm
land holdings from alienation, supplementary non-farm income, remunerative prices for
produce, cheaper credit and microfinance, better education and health facilities for the agri
sector and sundry related issues.
Regrettably, the ruling regime's tearing rush to obtain final legislative approval at the height
of the pandemic and the parallel investments made by India's two largest crony
conglomerates that have jointly created the impression that the regime has no say and that
they are being dictated from behind the screen by these conglomerates in exchange for past
favours. Farmers legitimately apprehend that such government therefore has forfeited its
moral and electoral right to play honest broker. Hence, the need to look to replacing the 10%
privileged with a government that is far more representative of 1.40 billion Indians.
The panic reaction of the regime is amply manifest in installing spikes, RCC barriers,
concrete obstructions, police forces armed with steel pipes (instead of cane batons) and
phalanxes of police and para-military forces in full view of the world. In doing so, the ruling
regime betrays its utter lack of understanding that these forces, as also the defence services,
have strong agrarian roots too, that could drive revolt in the ranks and file.
Another interesting facet of this movement is the laudable use of the Internet and media by
the agitating farmers. If the ruling regime used the Internet and media to spread a past it's
shelf-life communal and militant venom, farmers used the same channels to stay abreast of
the huge concessions that India's two largest conglomerates have obtained and the meteoric
rise in their assets in less than seven years; also reportage of multi-thousand crore ill-gotten
money in 'buying' elected representatives.
The duplicity of a system where cash was no consideration for sustaining and expanding an
increasingly authoritarian puppet regime while the indigent saw their fortunes dip further
south was not missed by farmers. The virtual economic partition of the country between these
two conglomerates in the same period is not lost either on them. Media reports of 90%+
utilization of electoral bonds by the ruling regime clearly prove the regime's brazen
complicity with business conglomerates, facts not lost out on agitating farmers. They are
fearful yet angry, stubborn for a cause, yet still willing to listen to reason, oblivious of
calumny hurled at them.
Farmers repose very little real residual faith in the Executive, Legislature or the Judiciary and
for entirely wholesome reasons, yet have chosen the path of peaceful protest, probably the
world's largest in recent memory. That is a perilous cocktail that could explode if this
movement is not guided by a dedicated and non-opportunist leaders that have mass following.
In that lies a humongous warning for the ruling regime too. History and Indians will never
forget nor forgive the current regime for plunging India into anarchy by its mindlessness and
the false security of its police forces.

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Having obtained concessions in critical but profitable sectors, these twin conglomerates have
now turned their avarice on agriculture. The haste in which the Acts cleared the Upper House
at the height of the pandemic, that too by dubious voice vote, added to farmers' suspicions.
What further alarmed farmers too were provisions relating to the end of APMCs, contract
farming, removal of wheat, paddy, etc. from the list of essential commodities, that gave rise
to an impression that the aforementioned twin business conglomerates had actually drafted
these legislations and a supine regime simply got them passed; hence the last mile subterfuge.
All these events in quick succession confirmed the worst fears of the farmers and brought
them to Delhi's borders in protest.
In effect, farmers, labour unions, the unemployed and underemployed, and many other
groups disadvantaged by the regime's furtive reform attempts may coagulate in due course
across India. It is a telling comment on the ruling regime's competence and complete absence
of intellectual capital that they arrogantly ignored time and context that were central to a
successful reform programme. Sudden death of crony-run dubiously reformist regimes has
wrought disaster and fatality upon their leaders in the not too distant past across the world.
In the next two years or so (in time for the 2022 UP and 2024 LS elections), this movement
may well lay the foundation of a more egalitarian and accountable political system. That may
well see a period of anarchism and extremism since this is a loosely controlled movement
without any formal organization before it gets its act together in the coming few months. If
Muzaffarnagar was a huge blunder by Jats against Muslims, so are Singhu, Tikri and
Ghaziabad borders for the regime, for two wrongs cannot justify right.
Economic relations between castes and communities that took shape over several centuries
are today being broken down by an antediluvian ideology rooted in a mythical past glorified
without a shard of evidence pushing India back several centuries. All these are legitimately
viewed with legitimate apprehension by lower castes and communities, a large proportion of
them small and marginal farmers, for whom survival depends on their historic economic
relations. Likewise, not all middlemen (arthiyas) belong to higher castes and have reason to
feel disaffected.
These Acts upend rural society too by declaring war on an centuries-old ecosystem that
includes the village schoolteacher, grocer, blacksmith, veterinarian, priest and innumerable
more that will lose their livelihood. That is when urbanization covers less than a third of
India's population and that too in crumbling slum cities with few or no civic amenities, let
alone alternative livelihood or social security net.
What Indians, and the world, are looking at is a historic cross-class social (and political)
movement in the making, one that represents the aspirations of 90% Indians. And that
includes people like you and me. The past and the present sometimes must be buried to make
way for a brighter future. (1649 words)
The author is a public policy analyst and commentator