Farmers heading for Delhi again demanding fulfilment of promises
By Sushil Kutty
In the next few days, lakhs of farmers unhappy with the Modi government will be making banner headlines in national and international media all over again and the Modi government’s Bharat Ratna for kisan leader, the former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, will be taken as a failed enterprise of a government in panic. Can’t blame Jayant Chaudhary because which Indian wouldn’t want a Bharat Ratna in the family? The Modi government can also be excused for believing such kneejerk tactics would deliver Jat votes on a platter to the BJP/NDA, whatever.
Thing is, if Jayant Chaudhary is Jat leader, who on earth is Rakesh Tikait, and the others who are waiting with “modified battle-ready” tractors to take on the police? The thing is, farmers are back on the warpath and the Modi government can make sense of what it entails. “Warpath” essentially means – hordes of farmers from Punjab and Haryana and elsewhere are heading for Delhi and the authorities in the national capital remember the almost two years when Delhi was encircled by tens of thousands of farmers who forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take back the three “black” farm laws.
For a Prime Minister, who is reportedly authoritarian, for whom the three farm laws were crucial, a matter of personal prestige, the humiliation of being shown his place was total. Now, while the black laws lie dormant among the shelved, the farmers have plans to return in a big way, and once again lay siege to Delhi. This, even as central ministers tried to convince farmers’ unions to shelve the planned ‘Delhi Chalo’ march of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha and Kisan Mazdoor Morcha.
Their main demand – a law to guarantee a minimum support price for crops. It is an old demand, also an old promise. The MSP will be an election issue. Union ministers, including Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda, who held talks with leaders of the kisan unions couldn’t produce a single ‘Modi Ka Guarantee’ on the farmers demands and that has set the stage for a protracted agitation. The last siege saw 700 kisans die with their demands dead on water. Union agriculture minister Arjun Munda has now promised further discussions but there are no believers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also promised MSP and what had come out of it – zilch? The battlelines have been drawn. Haryana and Delhi have fortified their territories with concrete blocks, road spikes and barbed wires. Police are ready to deploy in massive numbers. Section 144 will be imposed. Haryana particularly is war-ready. Chances are Jayant Chaudhary and the Bharat Ratna to former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh will not make an iota of difference to the demand for MSP for crops.
The farmers know they cannot compel Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bow to pressure again. And if Modi is returned to power with the massive mandate he keeps talking about, farmers and the opposition alliance backing them will be cowed down to kowtow to brute majority. It is imperative to defeat the BJP/NDA in the 2024 general elections, not in the streets, to deliver the goods. Mind you, the “Ram-mayi” voter is dog-tired of mayhem in the streets.
Maybe, doubling the street-veto with a repeat CAA agitation, with another Shaheen Bagh, would be in the cards. Signals emanating out of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh and Haldwani in Uttarakhand portend such a likelihood. CAA is as much unfinished business as the three farm laws are. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has been very vocal on implementing CAA before the onset of general elections. Once he sets the ball rolling, it won’t take long for the reaction to ring in.
Point is it wouldn’t be just Ram Mandir alone which will decide who votes for which party and why? Farmers will look at MSP also. Punjab farmers and Haryana farmers will vote differently for different reasons. The farmers of western Uttar Pradesh will have Modi to thank for – for the Bharat Ratna to Chaudhary Charan Singh – Jayant Chaudhary’s word to Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be sacred for his “biradari”. The agitating farmers might find themselves curtailed for reasons beyond their control.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi jumped to the defence of these farmers asking people, those from Delhi, to “uproot those who have put nails in the path of farmers”. He’s talking of reports of “nails laid on roads and multiple barricades” to stop farmers heading for Delhi. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra added her voice to that of Rahul Gandhi and there is every chance that the farmers’ demands will be a major talking point of general elections 2024. One more front to fight. (IPA Service)