Farmers Protest! A Movement for Our Times | Book Excerpt

THE INVISIBILISED FARMERS: WOMEN, AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS, DALITS, ADIVASIS AND TENANTS

In this chapter, I attempt to introduce the reader to the many agriculturists who form the lower economic—and, often, lower social—strata of farmers throughout India. This group includes women; Adivasis, or indigenous communities; Dalits, or the most underprivileged in the caste hierarchy; tenant farmers; and agricultural labourers. These are not mutually exclusive subgroups and a farmer may, and often does, belong to one or more. What stands out, though, is that all of these communities of farmers are ‘invisibilised’ in the eyes of the general public and a majority of policy makers.

MARCHING ONCE AGAIN: MAHARASHTRA FARMERS

On 12 March 2023, about 10,000 peasants started to march from Nashik to Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, with a 15-point charter of demands. In six days, they had walked about a hundred kilometres and reached Vasind in Thane district, where the march came to an end. The state government had conceded in writing to many of their demands. Moreover, the chief minister tabled before the state assembly, which was in session on 17 March, those demands the government had agreed to. This was the third time that farmers from Nashik marched to Mumbai to ensure that their demands be heard: first, in March 2018, and the second time in February 2019.

Among the major demands that the Maharashtra government promised to meet this time were the provision of loan waivers; provision of a subsidy for onion, a major crop in the Nashik region, with the farmers often at the receiving end of price crashes; and implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006) to give land titles to the Adivasi farmers who had cultivated their lands for generations.

During the 2018 march in the country라이브 바카라 capital, similar demands had been raised. On 27 November, at the Nizamuddin station in Delhi, a group of twenty-three Adivasi farmers from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra alighted from a train to join the Kisan Mukti Morcha. They belonged to the Kolam Adivasi community and grew cotton on their farms in Yavatmal district. They had joined the farmers’ movement to highlight their main demands: ‘loan waivers, fodder for their cattle, a decent price for their produce, a minimum support price, employment and food security’.

The most pressing problem for the farmers in this district back in 2018 was the drought that went for about three years from 2015. The loan waiver that the government had announced was only a half-measure, said Chandrashekhar Sidam, one of the farmers from Yavatmal. In Maharashtra, the Vidarbha region has seen the greatest number of suicides, and within this region, Yavatmal district has been the worst affected. With rainfed farming and no irrigation facilities here, most of the farmers are left to fend for themselves.’ The women from their village had joined a protest march in Mumbai a week before this, and did not join the march in Delhi. Sidam had this to say about the women farmers:

Agriculture is impossible without women. They do the weeding and maintenance of the crops. They do the cottonpicking. They also often do sowing. So without women, the work on farms just cannot go on. Women are an important part of each of our morchas. But this time, many of the women had already gone to Mumbai for a women farmers’

meeting. Their families are dependent on them for everything. Even if she is not the head of the household, the woman is the most important person in a home upon whom the whole family depends.

In March 2023, the Maharashtra government did not act on the promises it had made that led the farmers to call off the protests after six days of marching. Subsequently, the farmers took to protesting again. On 26 April 2023, they started marching from Akole in Ahmednagar district, a distance of nearly 130 kilometres to their destination. They walked for three days before stationing themselves outside the residence of the state revenue minister in Loni. AIKS had organised the protest march, and this time, the farmers were joined, in large numbers, by workers and construction labourers.

At the start of the march, there were about 8000 people, the number swelling to almost double that by the evening of the first day. On the second day of the protests, three ministers of the Maharashtra government—including the revenue minister, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil—went to talk to the farmers and their leaders. This time, after a three-hour-long meeting, the ministers gave an assurance to the farmers that all their demands would be met.3 They included loan waivers for dairy farmers and farmers who had lost their crop to natural calamities.

The ministers also agreed to increase the pension for agricultural workers and farmers, and increase the pay of rural health workers, ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activists),* and day care workers. The ministers agreed, as well, to provide medical insurance and housing for construction labourers.

It is obvious that the Maharashtra government did not want a large contingent of farmers and workers landing on the doorstep of its revenue minister. This would have set a precedent for more such protests with the country라이브 바카라 general elections in the summer of 2024, and the elections for Maharashtra state assembly in the last months of 2024. Whether they keep their promises this time, or break them once again, remains to be seen.

ON THE OUTER EDGE OF THE CASTE HIERARCHY: DALIT AND ADIVASI FARMERS

At the Tikri border protest site in November 2021, I was talking to a group of Punjabi Sikh farmers. I asked one of them how big his farm was. Before he could speak, another man standing next to him butted in, ‘He is a labourer, he doesn’t own land.’ A few others repeated it. After they finished, the man I had addressed replied with exceptional calm, ‘I work on their farms,’ and gestured towards the other men in the group. Some four months later, a group of students I met at Punjabi University in Patiala gave their thoughts on agriculture in the state of Punjab, and the year-long farmer protests.

Most of them were from the families of landless farmers and agricultural labourers. A 22-year-old undergraduate student of history (who requested I not use her name) had worked on a leased farm along with her parents, and said, ‘That is the first of our problems. The amount we need to pay as rent is very high and unaffordable. Over and above that, we also have to pay for using the canal water. In a year, we shell out 3000 rupees for a farm of about one acre. At the end of the harvest and selling of crop, we end up with no profit, but often incur a loss. The loans taken to meet all the expenses are hard to repay.’ This student joined the Punjab Radical Students Union, and is also an activist working for better facilities for poor farmers, especially tenant farmers. ‘Water should be given free of charge, especially to landless tenant farmers,’ she said.

‘Our society has to change. Caste discrimination has to change.’ She wants to complete her PhD and is hopeful that, over time, the youth will understand that caste-based discrimination is harmful and it will end.

(Excerpted from Farmers Protest! A Movement for Our Times by Namita Waikar with permission from Yoda Press)