Farm protests have never been about farmers, Lakhimpur Kheri vindicates that again

We all must have written essays in our school days on ‘How to improve conditions of farmers in India’. And all our essays even two decades back invariably included freeing farmers from the middleman (Arhatiyas), to improve the condition of farmers in India. Many economists said the same thing through their respective economic models—that farmers should have a choice to sell their produce on their terms to the buyers he wants to sell, and he should not be restricted to local mandis alone. Political parties like the Indian National Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Shiromani Akali Dal and others talked in favour of removing the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act at different points of time. But in 2020, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced three farm laws to provide farmers a wider choice to sell their produce, everyone took a royal U-turn in the pressure of the resourceful middlemen lobby and unions represented by the large farmers. In fact, Rakesh Tikait, the face of farmers’ movement today, had initially supported the farm laws and congratulated the prime minister after the laws were passed, saying it would bring peace to Mahendra Tikait’s soul, his father who vouched for similar laws three decades ago. Owing to these opportunistic about-turns, Modi called the opposition for farm reforms intellectual dishonesty (rajneetik dhokhadhadi). By opposing the farm reform bills, in Punjab every political party started a contest to appear as a bigger messiah of the middlemen lobby and rich farmers. Punjab Congress burnt the symbol of agriculture—‘a tractor’—in front of India Gate to get traction. Shiromani Akali Dal, whose leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal once vociferously defended these farm reforms, took a U-turn in the pressure of seeding ground to the Congress in Punjab. The Aam Aadmi Party, which supported similar reforms in their manifesto for Punjab, also changed their stand. All these parties kept farmer’s larger interests at stake to gain political dividends. No wonder, this intellectually dishonest farmers’ protest took different garbs: In Punjab, it became a protest of Arhatiya; in Haryana, it was pushed as a matter of Jat pride; and in western Uttar Pradesh, farmer protest became a way to advance the political interest of Rakesh Tikait and his family. Because the intentions were dishonest, the outcomes of the protest were also vicious. The agitation which started as a protest against the three farm laws soon became the stage for multiple things—some protestors wanted the release of the likes of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, while others wanted Elgar Parishad activists booked for the Bhima Koregaon case freed. The so-called farmer protest showed its true colours on the 2021 Republic Day. After multiple assurances of a peaceful tractor rally by farmer leaders, the mayhem that the protesters created in the national capital on 26th January completely exposed them. They used tractors to mow down policemen, they used swords to attack cops on duty, and they denigrated the sanctity of the Red Fort by hoisting a religious flag there. They did everything possible to provoke the police to fire on them and to later showcase the Modi dispensation as an anti-farmer government. But Delhi Police’s commendable restraint did not fulfill their objective. By that time the Modi government had completed a dozen rounds of talks with the farmer representatives—which resulted in an impasse as these leaders adopted a ‘my way or high way’ negotiation strategy through the discussions. The agitation kept touching new lows since then. Protesters started joining hands with international anti-India lobbies. This was revealed when climate environmentalist Greta Thunberg inadvertently revealed the sinister global campaign against India after she accidentally shared a ‘Toolkit’ for those who wanted to run a massive online anti-India campaign in the garb of ‘farmer protests’ in the country. One of the stated objectives of this toolkit was to disrupt the ‘Yoga and Chai’ image of India. After a point it became difficult to keep track of the illegal activities happening either at the protest sites or by these protestors elsewhere. A 25-year-old woman activist, who had travelled all the way from West Bengal to join the farmers’ protest at the Tikri border, was allegedly raped on the way to Delhi and then at the Tikri border. There was a complete silence from ‘farmer leaders’ like Yogendra Yadav on such heinous acts against women. Another protestor, 42-year-old Mukesh from Kasar village, camping at the Tikri border, succumbed to burn injuries after fellow protestors allegedly set him ablaze over a dispute. A shocking video of him being set on fire has gone viral on social media where one can also hear the casteist abuses being thrown at him before he was set ablaze. What happened at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh over the weekend was a natural extension of this dishonest agitation in the name of farmers. Nine people lost their life—three BJP volunteers, one driver, four protesters and one mediaperson. As per the field reports, driver Hari Om Mishra was driving the vehicle which allegedly got pelted with stones by the protestors. To escape the mob fury, he reportedly speeded up and lost balance and crushed a few protestors. Then the protestors, as per reports, pulled the driver and BJP workers and lynched them to death, beating them with sticks and swords. A local reporter covering the incident too was lynched by these farmers. A few days back Rakesh Tikait had openly warned the media to fall in line and his followers seemed to have executed his wishes at Lakhimpur. In the last one year of these protests, three lies have been fed to us and they all stand exposed today. First, we were told that it’s a protest of 20 crore farmers of India, which has turned out to be a protest of 2.25 states—Punjab, Haryana and a few districts of western Uttar Pradesh. Second, we were told that this is an apolitical movement; today, it has become a platform to revive the fortunes of a few failed and aspiring political leaders and their parties. Third, we were told that it was a peaceful movement but its true nature got exposed during the Republic Day and at several events thereafter. Now it’s amply clear that it was never meant to be a farmer protest! The author is a political commentator. Views expressed are personal.