The scenes of farmers and agriculture workers protesting at Delhi’s borders are a throwback to 2020-21: long lines of about 1,000 trolleys attached to brightly-coloured tractors, large dekchis of sweet chai boiling on wood-fuelled stoves to serve hundreds, voices of peacefully organised dissent. In this time’s Delhi Chalo call, though, police and paramilitary forces are ‘better prepared’: on Day 1 of the protest that began on February 13, concrete barricades, 10-12 layers deep, were in place; nearly 4,500 tear gas shells were fired to disperse gatherings on the Haryana-Punjab border, most using drones; the number of Delhi Police personnel swelled to 6,000.
On February 14, the day of Basant Panchami, farmers flew kites, traditional for the first day of spring, and called for a grameen (rural) and industrial strike on February 16. Rail tracks will be blocked; so will roads, with support from truckers and transporters. Movement into and out of Delhi will be halted, even as the city is turned into a fortress citing security.
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The farmers’ main demand is a legally guaranteed minimum support price (MSP), with about 12 other asks, including the banning of foreign direct investment (FDI) and corporatisation of agriculture. The protest on the Punjab-Haryana side is led by two groups: the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) formed in November 2020 in Delhi’s Gurdwara Sri Rakab Ganj Sahib, after three controversial laws farmers said heralded corporatisation was enacted in Parliament; and the SKM (Non-Political), a splinter section that has the support of about 200 organisations. The SKM is an umbrella for about 500 groups and works closely with 10 main central trade unions that collectively have a 6 crore membership.
On February 14, Shardanand Solanki, a lawyer in his 80s and the SKM’s Sonipat district leader in Haryana, addresses about 100 farmers near Bhadana village in Sonipat. There are many micro-meetings being conducted on varied issues. This one is on the laying of high-tension power cable posts in the fields. “The governments at the Centre and the State are doing this without even legally acquiring farmlands,” says Solanki.
On a stage, one of about 20 minor ones in the area bordering Delhi, he compares police action against farmers to lathi charge injuries suffered by freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai in 1928, during the Simon Commission visit to Lahore. He also tells listeners not to get sucked into whether the SKM or SKM-NP is leading the protest.
Solanki, a white-haired farmer sporting a blazer, says to his compatriots, “Jitna daman karega, kisan utna mazboot hoga (Repression will strengthen the farmers). He uses Rai’s famous statement about lathi blows being “like coffin nails for British imperialism”, changing it to: “Each lash that lands on farmers’ bodies will act as a nail in the coffin of the Narendra Modi government.” On February 11, the SKM had issued a press release in solidarity with farmers in the EU, where farmers are agitating. The communication urged the Central government to “learn a lesson from struggles in Europe”.
Farmers ran as police personnel fired tear gas canisters on them as they were advancing towards Delhi to seek enactment of a law on minimum support price at Shambhu Barrier in Punjab on February 13, 2024. | Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
Over the last few weeks, as the fanfare around the Ram temple in Ayodhya reached a crescendo, the SKM visited about 25,000 villages with the message of “livelihood issues” over “Hindutva politics”. Several farmers’ organisations that work with the SKM-NP had or continue to have the support of the volunteer-based Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
After the meeting beside fields of wheat that will be ready to harvest in March and April, he politely refuses the hookah offered by an elderly farmer. “Delhi will soon be encircled by farmers and workers who struggle to make ends meet,” he says, after he gets off stage.
Delhi central
About 100 kilometres from Sonipat, in front of Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida Authority in the National Capital Region, G.D. Sharma, a farmer, sits in protest with others. They are demanding a fair compensation for land acquired by the government for ‘development’, including an upcoming international airport at Jewar. They first sat on the road under shamianas (tents) outside the government building in December, but went home after being assured of action. When none was forthcoming, they came back in January’s sub-10 degrees Celsius temperatures.
“From 1976 to 2000, the government acquired 45 bighas (about 113 square km) of my land. In 1976 I got a compensation of ₹3 for a square metre and in 2000, I got ₹2,600. I was promised preferential treatment for my children and family in education, health care, and employment. We were even offered 10% back after development of the area. None of this has happened,” he says. He wants the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, properly implemented to ensure market value.
A leader in Noida and Greater Noida, Digamber Singh, says farmers are protesting in front of the Noida Authority, the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority, and the Yamuna Expressway Authority offices. “They acquired land from farmers for the airport at ₹2,300 to ₹3,100 per square metre. This land has been transferred to corporate companies at rates ranging from ₹72,000 to ₹80,000 per square metre. This is exploitation,” Singh says. He adds that they will continue to seek justice for those who gave up their land for “so-called development”.
Farmers try to advance towards Delhi to seek enactment of a law on minimum support price at Shambhu Barrier in Punjab on February 14, 2024. | Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
On February 17, U.P.’s 500 farmer organisations will meet to decide on how to support their Punjab and Haryana counterparts. He says farmers are willing to march to Delhi again, the way they did two weeks ago, resulting in a complete stoppage of traffic in and around Noida.
From Singhu to Shambhu
Meanwhile, in Jind, a district in Haryana bordering Punjab, SKM-NP’s tall, lanky, moustached leader Shiv Kumar Kakka, known as Kakka ji, says more than 60 farmers were injured in the police action. Kakka, a farmers’ leader from Madhya Pradesh, was earlier with the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, a farmer outfit of the RSS. He and a few others formed the Rashtriya Kisan Maha Sangh in 2017, after ideological differences emerged. “The Narendra Modi government must understand that Delhi belongs to farmers too, not just to leaders. We will march to Delhi with our demands,” he says, his brow furrowed. He condemns what he calls the undemocratic approach of the Centre. Despite the Internet shutdown, farmers have managed to gather at certain preset locations to meet and plan further movement.
One of the key organisers of the SKM-NP is K.V. Biju, a former leader of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, another RSS outfit. Biju, from central Kerala, was brought to the farmers’ movements by the late Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, a Minister and later Supreme Court judge.
“Justice Iyer told me that those who oppose neoliberal policies should fight in a united manner. So I started working with him against the policies imposed on farmers by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Centre and State governments. Later, when farmers leaders such as Kakka ji and [Faridkot-based] Jagjit Singh Dallewal formed the Rashtriya Kisan Maha Sangh, I became its national coordinator,” Biju says, his jhola falling from his shoulder, as he explains his connection with farmers in north India. The WTO policies he opposes are those that impact Indian farmers negatively, like the import of tariff-free agro-products. Biju cites the example of Indonesian and Vietnamese pepper flooding the Kochi market.
Farmers try to advance towards Delhi to seek enactment of a law on minimum support price at Shambhu Barrier in Punjab on February 14, 2024. | Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
For SKM-NP, the decision to enter Delhi was not taken in a day. “From September 2023, we have held 27 kisan mahapanchayats (farmer mega-meetings) in 20 States. Thousands of farmers attended these,” says Biju, who is one of 500 farmers from south and east India in the Delhi Chalo march. The SKM-NP is also aligned with Sarwan Singh Pandher’s Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM), a powerful voice in the areas around Amritsar in Punjab.
Ready to go
Both Dallewal and Pandher claim they have come prepared for the long haul. “There are more farmers in this protest than the protests against the three farm laws,” Dallewal says. Farmers have foodgrains, pulses, grocery, and medicines.
The key demand for a legally guaranteed minimum support price is based on the formula of C2+50% (crop cost including the cost of capital and land rent + 50% of the crop cost) mooted by the National Commission on Farmers, constituted in 2004 under agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan. After the withdrawal of the three farm laws in 2021, the Centre constituted a committee to address the farmer crisis. It has met only thrice so far and is yet to submit its report.
The SKM-NP’s demands include an increase in import duty on all agricultural products, for India to delink itself from the WTO and cancel free trade agreements, and for a ban on FDI in agriculture and agro-retail, including e-commerce. They also want the government to cancel farmer debts, refrain from privatising electricity, and a monthly farmer pension of ₹5,000.
Apart from an MSP and guaranteed procurement, the SKM wants guaranteed employment to be a fundamental right, a loan waiver to small and middle farm households, comprehensive crop insurance in the public sector replacing the PM Fasal Bima Yojana, a minimum wage of ₹26,000 per month for workers, repealing of four Labour Codes passed in Parliament between 2019 and 2022 that relaxed labour laws, and calling back of the amendments proposed to the Electricity Act, 2003 that allow for privatisation of power distribution boards.
While these are the big asks, there are the seemingly small ones that impact farmers’ daily lives, keeping the protests alive. Kapil Dev, from Sonipat, speaks against the “forceful” acquisition of land for electricity lines that began in the area two months ago. “At various points bordering Delhi, farmers have started protests. We will help those from Punjab march to Delhi,” Dev says.
Leaders like Kakka ji believe farmers can cross the barricades to enter the Capital. As Sharma says, “The real power sits in Delhi.”
