Analysis | India’s Modi finds his match in protesting farmers, but who will blink first?
- Indian PM has reiterated his resolve to carry out agricultural reforms, but the protesting farmers insist they will not go home without a victory
- The farmers say Modi’s intimidation tactics won’t work, and one analyst believes he is trying to find a way to back down ‘without losing face’
Mass protests over the reforms – which on Thursday saw trains at two dozen locations in Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh states blockaded for four hours by the farmers – are India’s largest in recent memory and their outcome will no doubt be a defining moment for the country.
After the failure of 11 rounds of talks, both sides have dug in. As winter fades at the three protest sites on the outskirts of the Indian capital, farmers are preparing for the long, hot Indian summer by bringing in fans, air coolers, mosquito nets and supplies of water.
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The farmers from western Uttar Pradesh and the northern states of Punjab and Haryana who have been camped at the sites since November 26 have said they will not go home until the government backs down. “We are going to stay indefinitely,” said farm leader Rakesh Tikait, who insists that the three farm laws passed by parliament in September will strip farmers of their livelihoods by favouring private corporations.
Manjit Singh Arora, a 40-year-old farmer from Hoshiarpur in Punjab who is based at the Ghazipur camp at the New Delhi border, said his parents had gone home for a few days. “They wanted to exchange their woollens for lighter clothes and take the quilts back so that we can free up some space in the tractor trolley”, where their belongings are kept. “They will be back soon,” he said.
Arora expressed his anger at what he called Modi’s attempts to defame farmers – many of whom are Sikhs – as “religious separatists”, and he said the government’s arrest of sympathetic activists this week had only hardened their determination.
“Modi is resorting to intimidation to break our movement,” he said. “But it won’t work. We are farmers. We have a history of protest and a confidence about winning. Nothing scares us or deters us. The sooner he understands that the better.”
The farmers, many of them elderly and weather-beaten, have little to lose. Discomfort does not worry them. True, their fields back home have to be tended, but that is easily arranged through a rotating system where half a family remains in the village to work in the fields while the other half keeps up the numbers at the protest sites.
If anything, far from backing down, Tikait said 40 farm leaders were planning to tour the country to mobilise support.
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“I think Modi is looking for a way to back off without losing face but hasn’t found it yet,” said author and political commentator Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jnr. “Their swooping down on activists and journalists and charging them with sedition might be a cunning ploy to create a smokescreen while they tire the farmers out through attrition.”
While the state of play between the two sides has remained unchanged for weeks now, one thing is clear: the crisis is no longer simply about Modi’s attempts to modernise agriculture but has swollen into a test of his commitment to democratic freedoms.
The debate currently under way centres around the question of how far he will go with the repression of those who disagree with his policies, and how many people he can label “seditionists” or agents of an international conspiracy to tarnish him.
The arrest and the manner of arrest of green activist Disha Ravi shows clearly the murder of democracy
More than 10 journalists and politicians have been charged with sedition for tweets about the protests. Supporters of the farmers’ cause have been treated as unpatriotic troublemakers. Twitter accounts of organisations reporting on the protests have been suspended on the government’s orders.
“The arrest and the manner of arrest of green activist Disha Ravi shows clearly the murder of democracy. But the young in India cannot be silenced,” said Congress Party leader Jairam Ramesh.
Other opposition parties joined the chorus of protests, especially as Ravi’s arrest was followed by more detentions of young activists.
For some commentators, Modi’s options are shrinking. One is to wait to see if the farmers tire and disperse. In fact, the crowds at two of the three protest sites have indeed thinned out in recent days, but farm leaders insist this is temporary.
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Suhas Palshikar, a political scientist and chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics, thinks that if the movement remains strong Modi will have to back down, but he will do it gradually to avoid the appearance of a spectacular blow to his authority.
This, he said, is because Modi is anxious about the message it would send to his opponents and other possible protesters waiting in the wings – he cannot be seen to be weak and prepared to surrender.
The climbdown will be portrayed as a sensitive response to the farmers’ concerns – perhaps a written undertaking to them to maintain the minimum price for produce that they are demanding – rather than a change in his position, Palshikar predicted.
“Since farmers elsewhere have not come out in large numbers in solidarity with Punjab and Haryana farmers, Modi can portray his farm reforms as a success overall in much of India and say it is only for farmers in the north and west for whom he is making specific concessions,” Palshikar said.
