The announcement by the Prime Minister last week that the farm laws would be repealed was accompanied with the clarification that reforms in the agriculture sector were a necessity and that it was the government’s failure that it could not convince a section of farmers about the benefits of the laws. This gives hope that the rollback is a temporary setback and the next step towards reforming the sector will be taken after the majority of the stakeholders are on board, with the Opposition in particular satisfied that they could have their say. The farm laws were based on decades of research by experts, and were essentially good laws, but the problem was in communication. The message should have reached every village square, but instead vested interests managed to hijack the narrative and painted the laws as pro corporate and harmful to the farmers. But even then the reach of the agitation was limited to two and less than a quarter of a state—Punjab, Haryana, and some parts of western Uttar Pradesh. In fact, those describing the decision to repeal the farm laws as essentially political—perhaps unfairly, as no one is yet privy to the information what actually led to the repeal—ahead of the elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and a clutch of other states, are forgetting that the protests too are essentially political in nature. The protests were started with a firm eye on the Punjab elections, and the crowd from UP, led by the likes of Rakesh Tikait and his ilk, jumped on the bandwagon in the name of the farmers. In the process, a campaign of misinformation and disinformation was unleashed, making several farmers in these states raise the banner of revolt. The very fact that the so-called farmer leaders refused to budge from their demand of repealing the laws in spite of the government willing to discuss the laws clause by clause, make amendments and even put them on hold for 18 months, showed that the protests were all about fanning imagined fears, turning the public mood against the Centre’s ruling party and subsequently winning political dividends in the Assembly elections.
That this agitation is all about politics, is becoming even more apparent now that the farmer leaders, who are clearly on the backfoot, are scrambling to stay relevant by raising one demand after another, including seeking legal guarantee for MSP, withdrawal of the Electricity Amendment Bill, and scrapping the provisions of financial penalty for stubble burning. Additionally, in an extremely irresponsible move, they are planning to go ahead with their Parliament-gherao program by driving their tractors to the Parliament building. This could lead to a serious law and order situation and should be tackled firmly.
The government’s willingness to repeal the farm laws has been interpreted as a sign of weakness. The time has come to make it clear that softness is not necessarily weakness, and for this the tractor rally must not be allowed to descend into chaos, for that is the intention of these so-called farmer leaders—to ensure that there is violence and chaos, using which they can carve out political careers for themselves, or fulfil the agendas of their political masters who want anarchy on India’s streets.
Similarly, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi is back to spewing venom and is now threatening to turn the whole of Uttar Pradesh into Shaheen Bagh unless the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is repealed. Some anti CAA voices have started to be raised in Assam as well. If Kashmir’s mainstream politicians had the clout outside their union territory, they too would have tried to block the National Capital Region’s roads demanding the reimplementation of Article 370. In other words, it’s the season of playing politics, especially since elections to a clutch of states are approaching. But then in India, one election or the other is always round the corner, with too many interest groups in a position to influence these elections—interest groups whose leaders thrive on status quo and baulk at the very mention of the word “reform”. The consequences are there for all to see: the poor stay poor, while their leaders get richer. This cannot continue. If the government wants to make a difference, it needs to send out the message that it is serious about bringing in reforms; that its softness should not be construed as a sign of weakness.