FRAGRANCE OF IDEAS
Last week the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab in a major action during the night bulldozed the farmers’ dharna at the Shambhu border on the national highway connecting Delhi with Jammu and Kashmir. As per the civil and police authorities of the Punjab government, the agitating farmers present there were given ample opportunity to leave the venue and some of the leaders present there who objected to the government’s action were taken into custody on the spot. The tents erected there for the last more than one and a half years along with the top facilities therein were completely destroyed. Thus the highway was thrown open for the regular traffic bringing an end to the miseries of the common people suffering for the last two years due to the blockade.
It was observed that the common people took a sigh of relief and their expressions were telecast live by the media channels. Interviews on the regular media as well as the social media suggest that the businessmen, traders, industrialists and the common people were feeling instantly happy. But the so-called agitating farmers and their leaders didn’t support the government action. The Chief Minister of Punjab, Bhagwant Singh Mann had only a few days back given an ultimatum in this regard to the leaders of the agitation in a meeting in Chandigarh. The leaders of the agitation call it a betrayal of the Punjab government and the AAP led by Arvind Kejriwal who was a diehard supporter of the agitation all along.
The Punjab government took this action immediately after the meeting of the agitation leaders with the government that took place last Wednesday in which Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was also present. The farmer leaders were returning after talking to the Minister and the other members of the government delegation, when the Punjab Police took them into custody. The leaders included Jagjit Singh Dallewal, Abhimanyu Kohad, Sarwan Singh Pandher, Sukhwinder Kaur, Kaka Singh Kotra and Manjit Rai. The government of Punjab clarified that ‘the dharna was causing an immense inconvenience to the people on the busy highway and led to a loss of hundreds of crores to those involved in business and trade in the states of Punjab and Haryana and also the government’. Former Delhi CM Atishi Marlena warned that ‘Punjab’s economic downturn due to the prolonged roadblocks could push the state’s youth towards drugs’.
The irony is that the biggest supporters of the so-called farmers’ agitation in the form of Mahendra Singh Tikait, Yogendra Yadav, Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and sundries in the Indi-Alliance have maintained stunning silence by far on the issue. They have chosen to be silent primarily because they know it perfectly well that the ‘pipeline funding’ to the agitation has squeezed after the change of regime in the US and Canada and its consequent effect on a number of ‘agencies’ helping the agitation has also come to stay for a long time. They don’t see larger political interest now in the continuance of the agitation that they thought for years could have brought the Modi regime in India down. Here it needs to be important to understand the whole issue in perspective particularly in the context that PM Narendra Modi showed a great amount of forbearance in the past towards the agitation and took the three farm laws back in spite of the refusal of the Apex Court to direct the government in this regard.
The agitation of the so-called farmers started with the announcement of three farm-laws by the Centre that were duly passed by the parliament in September 2020. The main focus of the Bills was to grant maximum freedom to the farmers from the existing unwanted bonding and to increase their capacity to add value to their produce and also to their income. It is a known fact that the farmers in India are the worst victims of ineffective policy in respect of the agriculture farming and the consequent marketing of their produce. The feudal farming was slowly and steadily replaced by the mandi governed agricultural produce and marketing in the states. Over the last three decades, a large number of farmers felt forced to commit suicide throughout the length and breadth of the country. Their main reason to go for the worst was their financial condition.
The government of India under the leadership of the PM Modi expressed its resolve umpteen times to improve the overall condition of the farmers. It was declared that the income of the farmers would be doubled by the year 2022; and an amount of Rs 6,000 was also being credited in the accounts of the farmers during a year in three equal instalments directly by the government of India which continues unabated. The Neem coated urea was supplied by the government to the farmers along with the subsidised fertilizers, chemicals and pesticides. It was ensured that the farmers were given a guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) and the established mandis were supposed to procure the produce of the farmers without any procedural rigmarole.
It is an established fact that the farmers are not directly linked with the market of their produce and the mandis are playing the role of market for them. There is an APMC Act to regulate the smooth marketing for the farmers in the country. The Model APMC Act, 2003 released to the states provides for the registration of contract farming agreements by an APMC. This was done to safeguard the interests of the producer and the buyer through legal support, including dispute resolution. An Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) is a marketing board established by state governments in India to ensure that the farmers are safeguarded from exploitation by large retailers, as well as ensuring the farmers so that the retail price spread does not reach excessively high levels.
The three Farm Bills allowed the farmers of all hues to sell their produce outside the mandis, even from their farms, homes and roadside. It didn’t wipe out the mandi system but it gave freedom to the farmers to select their produce, buyer and the price of their produce. Besides it, the Bills also exempted the farmers from 18% levy of the central government.
Unfortunately for the farmers, that opportunity has ceased to exist. First of all, it needs to be clarified that all the farmers throughout the country were not in support of the farmers’ agitation. It is only a category of farmers who are spearheading the agitation. They mainly come from Punjab, and marginally also from Haryana and Western UP. In this agitation, unlike the earlier farmers agitations, the participation from Punjab was huge. Moreover, the agitation has also been found guided by certain political, separatist, extraneous and overseas elements. All these elements find one or the other reason to be associated with this uproar against Modi, BJP and the government. Once upon a time only four decades away before terrorism, Punjab used to be the frontline state of India in a variety of ways. However, agriculture remained Punjab’s mainstay and it remained as one of the largest producers of both the paddy and wheat.
A large number of migrant workers from UP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and MP are working as agriculture workers in the fields of Punjab and Haryana on payment as daily workers. Big and medium landlords in Punjab are involved in politics, business and overseas ventures to earn money while their fields are being taken care of by the migrant labour. The political players in Punjab and Haryana have a big stake in the mandis and their own men and women get elected or appointed in these high profile mandi mechanisms. Then there are Commission Agents (Aardtis) in the mandis who have a complete nexus with the government officials in the mandis.
SGPCs at various levels are also a part of this huge nexus over the last several decades. The political figures who have high stakes in these mandis, the office bearers of the mandis, commission agents, government officials appointed in the mandis and the big and medium farmers are the regular donors of the SGPC and the Gurudwaras spread over Punjab and Haryana. The existing system has hugely benefited all these stakeholders for the last several decades.
Moreover, there was another strong lobby which benefited from the government’s inadequate stock piling and store capacity in general, and particularly in Punjab. This is called the liquor lobby which purchases rotten wheat and rice from the government at a very nominal price to produce liquor in big volumes. The raw material becomes available to them due to the inadequate and unscientific storage facility of the government concerned. The new land laws would have given the responsibility of storage and piling of stocks to the private or corporate purchasers. The main political players in the government and in the opposition in Punjab with big stakes in the APMC mandis saw the farm laws as an end to their monopoly and control on the market and the gains it was bringing to them.
The money was earlier pumped to the unimaginable bounds with a big dimension of financing the international so-called celebrities in order to pressurise the government of India by their undue intervention in the internal affairs of India. The separatist angle has also been added with a design to bring a religious colour into the whole issue. The traditional anarchist forces with the blend of Maoist-leftist orientation mixed with the Congress flavour was trying to sustain the political dissent with the finesse needed.
The violence unleashed on 26th January 2021 in the name of farmers’ protests in Red Fort, Delhi brought a huge bad name not only to the protesters but also to the agitation. The unnecessary provocative sloganeering, statements and speeches also damaged the spirit of the agitation but the Modi government indeed exhibited great patience and large heartedness.
To conclude, it would be advisable for the agitating farmer leaders to enter into a dialogue afresh with the government without conditions and finalise the agreement with it to benefit the farming community for good and keep politics and politicking at a bay. Resolution is a near possibility now in the changed circumstances when the ‘tamasha of dharna’ is all over.
(The author is a senior BJP and KP leader, Human Rights Defender, author & columnist and can be reached at: [email protected])
