Two Dharnas
For months on end, Indian peasants have tenaciously sustained mass protests at two very different sites. Not only are the locations of the protests vastly different, but so too are the sections of peasantry involved; the issues on which they are struggling; and the specific authorities to whom their demands are addressed. The two sets of agitators even look very different. And yet there are links too between the conditions of these two sections of peasants.
The peasants at Delhi
One site of protest, about which most newspaper readers are aware, and about which we have written earlier on this blog, is at the borders of Delhi. Since July 22, a limited demonstration by a select group of these agitators is also taking place at Jantar Mantar, a short distance away from Parliament. These are men and women peasants of relatively developed regions, largely Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, in that order. Their immediate demand is the scrapping of the farm-related Acts which were rushed through Parliament by the Central Government in September 2020.
The rulers claim that these Acts have been brought in for the benefit of the farmers, and that the farmers are being misled or instigated by anti-national elements. The reality is, the peasants are agitating because they know that, with these Acts, the system of public procurement of foodgrains will be dismantled step by step; giant private corporations will take over the procurement, storage and distribution of agricultural commodities; these corporations will shift the pattern of cultivation acccording to their profitability; and large numbers of small peasants, without the guarantee of purchase of their crops at remunerative prices, will lose their lands to large farmers or to private corporations, even as they lack alternative avenues of employment.
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