ONCE upon a time, not too long ago, there existed many villages where present-day North Delhi is situated. Those villages were neither relocated nor vanished by a catastrophe. Rather, Delhi subsumed them along with everything else by which a village is identified even as the names still continue.

To the utter bewilderment of today’s rulers, the villages have returned with a bang, defying all hurdles.  Heavy road barricades with barbed wires, water cannons, tear gas shells, and massive deployment of police, paramilitary and rapid action force - nothing could stop the unending convoys of tractor trolleys. Thousands of farmers carrying essential items with them sufficient to last for weeks and months, ultimately settled down at Delhi borders demanding a repeal of the three infamous laws relating to agriculture and farm produce trade.

Consequently, all six highways connecting the country with its capital are blocked including the last one i.e., Jaipur –Delhi highway also coming to standstill by farmer-led by AIKSCC leadership including Ashok Dhawle, Hannan Mollah, Krishna Prasad, Yogender Yadav, Medha Patekar and others. It is not the agitating farmers who stopped these main roads but the BJP governments at the centre and states who have been denying the farmers entry to the capital of their country where they want to voice their point of view on the contentious farm laws and be heard.

The newly inhabited farmers’ dwellings have some very unique characteristic features which are curiously distinct from those villages these farmers have come from. No caste hierarchy is to be seen around here. Cooking and sweeping here is not the exclusive domain of women but is done by both men and women. No one has to ask for food, tea or drinking water from anyone. There are common angars (community kitchens) for all. Even passers-by are offered food and eatables at mealtimes.  Perpetually underfed and undernourished local rag picking children do not have to beg to eat anymore and feel more than at home while entertaining themselves the whole day.

This gathering of people is not a crowd of unknown faces like those often seen in market places. Here hundreds have assimilated with thousands on the very first day ready to take any trouble for the ones who are no longer the ‘others’. Thousand hearts throb here in grief for their comrades whose hearts stopped beating during sleep or shouting slogans echoing their indomitable determination to take on an arrogant and authoritarian regime. Here, some 20 of the valiant fighters from 18 to 80 years have so far departed.

These and many other factors make it a historical movement inevitably placing it in the glorious tradition of peasant uprisings of the Tebhaga, Warli Tribal Revolt, Punnapara, Surma valley, Tripura tribal revolt, Anti Betterment Levy and such others. Making a comparison carries no sense as each such movement has some distinct characteristics including the present one too. One notable aspect is that the current movement has assumed a visible all-India character even though the maximum participation from Punjab for understandable reasons to be explained at another place.

This agitation by farmers is assuming the nature of a mass movement with the joining of more and more sections of people whose livelihoods have been gravely threatened by the ruinous neoliberal policies that have been gaining in force over the past three decades but are being more ruthlessly and blindly imposed by the Modi regime of BJP during the past six years. The closest to fight with the farmers is the workers of both organised and unorganised sectors under the banner of major trade unions who are putting up a stiff resistance against the snatching of hard-earned labour laws at the instance of same corporate sharks who are seeking a complete takeover of huge agriculture sector of the country.

It is remarkable indeed that the minimally literate peasantry, often regarded as rustic and unintelligent, have so perceptively seen through and understood the whole real game behind the three laws ostensibly propagated as pro-farmer measures but actually meant for Adanis and Ambanis besides the foreign multinational agro-businesses dealing in seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, crop insurance, farm trade etc.

The movement has among its fold almost the entire strata of the peasantry- the poor farmers, the marginal farmers and even the rich ones. The landless farmers or the agricultural workers are also participating, many of whom take some land on an annual contract or do it on a sharing basis. These and other poor farmers form together no less than 30 per cent of the total cultivators in Haryana. They are farmers in all respects as they are equally dependent and connected to the APMC network or the Anaaj Mandi.

Consumers of all categories have their own stakes in it too. The Public Distribution System (PDS) being weakened over the years is bound to collapse in the absence of state procurement, FCI warehouses and fair price shops on which are dependent so many poor women. 

Classical cronyism of the Modi regime could not have been more strikingly exposed than by a single act of fraudulent land acquisition of a hundred-acre land in Neoltha of Panipat district by Adani group in Haryana and securing a ‘change of land use’ (CLU) from the Haryana government for making big silos to stock huge stores of food grains. The letter granting CLU bears the date of May 7, 2020, while the ordinance for the three laws was promulgated only on June 5 and ‘acts’ made only on October 20, 2020.  A journalist Akarshan Uppal, belonging to IBN-24 who exposed this big fraud, was seriously injured in a murderous attack. He is in a Karnal hospital. Even the land was acquired at distressing rates of Rs 35 lakh per acre by spreading rumours that railways will take over the land thus creating fear among farmers.

Not only this, the mask of nationalism and patriotism of BJP-RSS is torn in shreds and their anti-national acts could have not got so convincingly exposed before the country as it is today. How can the chief minister of Haryana seal all the borders closing off the national highways connecting the national capital with other states and regions including Punjab, Himachal, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, UP and virtually the whole country? Does the Indian Constitution grant him the power to do this brazen violation of core basis defining the centre-state relations? Can a government duty-bound to guarantee the smooth movement of the people order digging of the roads constructed by the hard-earned money of the people, without absolutely any act of violence from the farmers’ side moving peacefully towards Delhi?

They have no shame in branding the movement with having links to Khalistanis or Maoists. What falsification! Some kisan organisations spearheading this movement have made incalculable sacrifices fighting bravely against terrorism in Punjab. The entire peasantry of Punjab had themselves been victims of terrorism.

How ridiculous it is that BJP has given a call to its workers to go to the villages and ask them to raise the SYL issue and demand surplus water from Punjab. This party has been simultaneously in power at the centre as well as ruling partners both in Haryana and Punjab but never made any sincere effort in resolving the issues between two states and now suddenly they think SYL will rescue them politically. Their frustration can be understood in the face of Haryana-Punjab Ekta Zindabad slogans reverberating throughout both states and at the borders. Actually, Khattar, chief minister of Haryana,  initially denied the participation of Haryana farmers in the agitation which fell flat with the massive success of Bharat Bandh on  December 8, toll-free plaza on December 12 and unprecedented mobilisation on all district headquarters in Haryana and across the country on December 14 at the call of Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM). It is noteworthy here that not only the participation from Haryana and other states are swelling every passing day but the logistic support in the form of  food grains, cooking oil, vegetables, fruits, milk, clean water, medicines, blankets and funds are provided in a  big way.

The so-called awareness campaign has already boomeranged when their stormtroopers including the BJP-JJP ministers were greeted with black flags and found themselves gheraoed by the people. The already fragile BJP alliance government in Haryana is shaken by tremors as legislators are feeling 'suffocated' finding themselves badly isolated.

Farmers of Punjab, Haryana and other parts of Green Revolution belt can never survive without APMC which actually came into existence long ago in 1939 when the relevant ‘act’ was piloted by Ch Chhotu Ram, a minister in the ‘provincial government’ to save the farmers of composite Punjab from the worst form of moneylenders’ exploitation. It has its own set of problems which the farmers have been struggling against and getting rectified. What was needed really was to strengthen it all over the country and simultaneously introduce co-operatives of producers and consumers. On the contrary, the Modi government has found the pandemic situation more conducive to throttle the APMC mandis network even where it existed under the pretext of removing the middlemen leaving the farmers at the mercy of big private companies and virtually became their middlemen.

This movement has unimaginable democratic potential in it that will unleash tremendous scope capable of countervailing the challenges posed by the forces inimical to livelihood, self-reliance, social amity and everything that is progressive in the Indian Constitution.