The Burden of Hope

 

During the first wave of Corona pandemic when everything was safely locked down, the government of India brought an ordinance clearing the way for the new farm laws. The new laws allowed a free business in farm produce outside the government controlled Mandi system; enabled the private traders to stockpile huge quantities of essential commodities for future sales; and laid down a set of rules for contract farming. The farmers complained that they weren’t consulted in formulating these laws. They were apprehensive that the rampant forces of corporate will monopolize agriculture, thus depriving them of even the small gains they have made through their hard work.

Avatar Singh is a Sikh farmer. He is in his early sixties but age is yet to dent his body, primarily because it hardly has any effect on his spirit. He holds a very small patch of land, possesses no children, has an equally hardworking and healthy wife and an old female canine of the local breed whom he calls Rajjo. In addition, his barn situated in a small Punjab village has a cow, a buffalo and a pair of bulls whom he has appropriately named to put to shame any human being claiming to bear an attractive name. He has never been out of Punjab. People have gone to Canada from his neighbourhood but he has been more than contended with his wallowing songs in his little well like a bull frog ecstatic in rains. Well, wallow anywhere, but you have the choice to wallow like a king.  

This was his first outing but a momentous one. The disputed farm laws landed like a huge boulder in his well and he croaked and jumped out and before he knew anything found himself a part of the jathas bound for Delhi to force the central government to change its mind. So the sturdy farmer’s heavy leather jutis hit the asphalt outside his native state for the first time. All through Haryana on the highway, the state government tried to stonewall this massive demonstration by the farmers. Braving lathi charge, water cannons, tear gas and goonishly dug out roads, they nonetheless reached the Delhi border on November 26, 2020. The illiterate farmer thought the world was under their feet and its destiny in their grain-producing fist.

They intended to reach Jantar Mantar to protest against the farm laws mischievously cleared by the central government through a manipulative ordinance, thus quelling the democratic spirit of legislation and law making.

The huge garbage landfill at Ghazipur caught fire and started spewing out a cloud of smoke that slowly spread its noxious fumes over the foggy environment. As tension hung in the air and so did the pollutants, Avatar Singh’s eyes got buffeted by the smoke as the police forced them to stop at the border. He had heard so much about the culprit farmers’ role in choking Delhi to death through stubble burning. His nostrils slain by one of the foulest air, the old farmer thought, ‘Is it our stubble farming that chokes Delhi every winter or you spoil our air right up to Jalandhar?’

He got apprehensive whether it was going to be an Operation Bluestar kind of attack as his column of farmers rammed into heavy security at the Delhi-Sonipat border. The police put up a stiff resistance through tear gas and water cannons. About 2,000 Delhi police personnel plus 600 of RAF, CISF and CRPF were battle ready with body protection gear, helmets, canes, tear gas shells and what not.

Heavy stone barricades dotted almost every square feet of the road for a considerable depth. The obstacle was too big for the group to just swipe it away like they had done so far on their march from Punjab. So the farmer army pitched its tents and squatted stubbornly. The evening called and the rumblings in stomach showed a surprising talent for cooking held by those rough, big, callused hands of the peasantry.

Avatar Sing’s wife worked almost like a male in cahoots with his macho farming spirits. In reciprocation, the family patriarch equalled the mindset and skills of a majestic woman in sharing the kitchen duties. Sum and summary is that he cooked really well. ‘A good man has to be a good cook also,’ was his philosophy, if at all he had any time for such boring stuff as is borne by the thinking minds. So this evening his thick hairy fists were at the forefront of pounding flour, baking rotis, ladling rajma, stirring chawal and cutting salad. Given his kitchen-king type enthusiasm, he almost emerged as the chef-in-chief of the largest langar, the community kitchen, dotting the roadside to the Haryana side of the border.

After giving enough reasons to many a stomach to go burping with contentment, he was half way mark to his first burp for his otherwise copious meal when the ruckus rose. He knew his duties. It was not to eat but to serve and be a part of the marching band. He ran, leaving his meal midway, and joined a group of farmers as it pushed through the multiple layers of barricades, pelted stones in bole-so-nihal enthusiasm and made behind the enemy lines. More than anything else, there were ugly wordy altercation among a few boozed-up middle aged farmers and the duty-bound surly looking Jat constables of the Delhi police. Hitting the softest nerves, the Sikh farmers even name-shamed them for being a bloat on the farming community by serving an imperialistic government. The non-Jats in the platoons laughed and brandished their sticks, the Jats personnel even cocked their guns to pass the message that they mean to protect the fortress.

Avatar Singh particularly felt sorry for a young constable who had been hit with a whole lump of dung straight on his face. Once the intruders had been pushed back, he came forward to offer a bottle of water, food and prasad for the said constable. The latter took it with a frown, a bit guiltily as if he was being bribed. He even went ahead on his peace mission to offer prasad to some other personnel, but they politely refused or took just a symbolic morsel to keep the old farmer’s faith and their line of duty on an equal footing.

The agitation built momentum and then the government decided to clamp with full force on their movement into the national capital. The protestors and the police face offs at the state borders led to traffic chaos in the capital. The central government planned to let them gather at stadiums and hold them in a kind of open jail. The AAP government however won’t allow this. So the incoming bands of farmers from all directions coagulated at the entry points on the borders.

A beehive like buzzing camp surfaced at the Singhu border between Delhi and Sonipat in Haryana. Tractors, trailers and trucks stood like the convoy vehicles of the Delhi chalo army. The police camped on the other side, creating a buffer zone loaded with cement barricades, stone slabs, mud-filled trucks and barbed wires. It was a loud din and in the heaving commotion, a group of farmers tried to force march, tied barricades to their tractors to pull them out of the way. They had literally forced their march all along Haryana, braving water cannons and lathi charge in the chill of early winters. Hence the marching inertia would plonk its head for some time against the mighty barricades before making them understand the futility of it. 

Avatar Singh believed in peace and peaceful resolution of conflicts. Even when his neighbour’s buffalo chucked out the choicest lush green jowar, thus depriving his Dhulia (his buffalo) of her favourite breakfast, he took out the thickest stick from his collection, rolled his eyes with red fury, lashed his tongue with a few grand abuses and forced a deal with the offender. His buffalo will get the same treat in the offender’s still greener fodder crop. After that he laughed with the neighbour the next day and that was all to it.

Even here he was expecting the government to come with garlands and negotiate. After all, how can a government ignore the voices of so many thousands of its own people who have travelled hundreds of kilometres to meet the PM and be heard in his darbar. However, when the tear gas shells landed near him, the smoke wreaking havoc to let loose streamlets of tears, he ran to the final frontier and jumped into the cabin of a mud-filled truck, where a young farmer had just occupied the driver seat and started the ignition key. The old eyes and the young eyes met for a boosting determination and the war-cry yelling farmer rammed the truck into the barricade. He then dragged a bus for 100 meters before being arrested by the police. Avatar Singh threw his bulk like a big sack of potatoes on the little group of policeman waiting with glee ready to arrest him. They were scattered like marbles and he roused himself before anyone of them and ran across the zigzag of barricades. There were peals of laughter on both sides of the barricades. Everyone seemed to have gained something out of it. The only losers were the 4-5 police personnel who bore the weight of his falling bulk.

Back into the safe territory, he decided it was enough for the day and chose to be rather a dour part of the applauding and hooting audience around the proceedings. Another group tried to decapitate the tear gas machine vehicle and twisted its barrel. The police met the insult with a fresh round of cane charge and lobbied more tear gas shells. A few overenthusiastic farmers were seen crushing shells with their feet. More heroic types wrapped the enemy grenades in clothes and threw them back at the police. By this time, they appeared charged up and professionally equipped to put up a decent challenge. All along the way, the Haryana government had used many tactics to stop their march including digging the roads. So the farmers seemed to have availed a nice battle experience.

The farmers termed the new agrarian legislation worse than even Corona. They looked pretty comfortable in pitching makeshift tents, turning the highway look like a hustling township. Tractor-trolleys modified to cater to basic necessities, beddings, hookahs, gas cylinders, quilts, utensils, stoves and grains store, all these and more made it seem like a medieval army on the march, of course short of the bloody weapons. Burly farmers lounged on the beds made of stubble.

The Home Minister invited them to camp at the Burari ground but they saw through the plan.

Avatar Singh tried to make out the exact shape and size of the issue beyond the hulla-booing by the farmers and the government’s apathy to their demands. The farmer knew he had to learn a lot to make out what it exactly was about. He gave extra ear to a still older farmer who chuckled at the home minister’s offer, ‘They think our buffalo is smarter than us. Who will listen to us at Burari. It will be the same world to them without any difference. They will hardly look in our direction even if we sit there for four years!’  

During his Mann ki Baat address, the PM elaborated on how the new legislation would open new possibilities for the cultivators and would break their crippling shackles to gain prosperity. He talked of new dimensions, of giving them new rights and opportunities and much more driven by a fantastic oratory. He deplored the fact that the simple farmers were being misled on the new set of farm laws aimed at liberalizing the farm sector. However, the grim fact remained that the farmers’ income increased by just 20% in 50 years, while the salaries of government employees went up by 150% during the same time. Avatar Singh spat in disgust after listening to the address on a radio just because many others did the same. He had a liking for the Indian Prime Minister but now the charismatic leader appeared a very hard-hearted fellow who was adamant in not listening to any dissent against his decisions.  

The All India Kisan Sanghrash Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) hobnobbed with the leaders of almost three dozen farmer organizations. The powerful home minister was sending messages to meet the farmer leaders. But the latter knew they won’t stand any chance in one-on-one meet against the daunting leader. They said the Home Ministry has no role to meddle in agricultural affairs. They felt the government was simply taking it as a law and order problem. And the home minister’s capability in handling the law and order problem of any nature was beyond any doubt. It was so easy for the government to dub it as a law and order problem taking cognizance of the least instance of violence.

To make it worse, the opposition parties, not having much to do against the Modi Juggernaut, were trying to sneak into the movement to get a foothold again after severe bashing in election after election. The farmer leaders were aware of the hawkish designs of the political parties to use their movement for their political stage and benefits. They put up a firm diktat that no politician will be allowed to address from their platform. They would have their own fumbling, simplistic, unrhetorical, repetitive, amateur speeches.

Avatar Singh had attended school just for three days. After three days of torture, he started howling and the fist-, slap- and kick-work of his father was ineffective in putting him into the torture cell again. He was so scared of the tiny elementary village school. With the passage of decades, he would realize what he had missed by not boarding the lurching train of schooling.

‘An educated man is a superior species definitely,’ he maintained with firm conviction.

He hardly had any clue to the specifics and the nitty-gritty of the farm laws about whom everyone was talking with so much gusto. However, looking at the spirited and loud-mouthed resistance of thousands of farmers against these laws convinced him that they didn’t offer something good to the community. He opposed them because so many others did. He was marching along because so many others found meaning and purpose in it. As the peasant leaders vented out their yodelling grudges against the political class from the stage set up right in the middle of the road, he sat there like a diligent student all open and eager to imbibe the main issues involved in the agitation. He wanted his support to be aided by reasonable facts about the new farming legislation and its ill effects on the farming class. 

Women turned almost a backbone of the movement. They stayed in the tractor trolleys, turned into tents with canvas and polythene sheets, lined for kilometres from the main stage adjoining the barricading on the border. They prepared food, cleaned utensils, broomed the bustling premises, listened to the kisan leaders’ speeches and heartily raised slogans. There was abundant ration, oil, spices, quilts and mattresses. The will to stay there was even in more abundance. Walking across the shifting colours of this revolutionary thoroughfare, the ageing farmer marked it as the most significant milestone in his life.     

The diaspora added its support. A Sikh Canadian legislator criticized the Indian government’s use of force against the protesting farmers. In the UK, a Labour MP of Indian origin found the use of force against the protesting farmers deplorable. A car rally was organized by the Sikhs at South hall. 

To make it worse for the protesting farmers, November turned out to be the coldest in the last 71 years. Gurpurva approached, as the wintery chill of November handed over the baton to the frozen cold of December, with its power of faith in this chill. It was marked with langars, prasad and prayers. For almost all of the protestors, had it been a normal festival at their native places, it would have meant wearing new clothes, visits to the local Gurdwara, reciting holy scripture, offering services at the langar and lighting celebratory lamps at night. The most important event of course would be nagar kirtan wherein they marched across the locality, the procession headed by a well decorated vehicle carrying the Guru Granth Sahib accompanied by processional singing of hymns.

As we know these were the first nights of Mr. Singh outside his home state. He was part of the group festivity here and missed his wife. He would call his wife at night and give her a summary of all that happened during the day. She would always assure him that he was fighting for their kaum which was really credible. To be held in high esteem by his wife further raised the scale of his heartbeat. Well, if your wife can still raise your heartbeat, in a positive way of course, into your old age then mark it, you have been very lucky.  

He joined the groups of farmers reading the holy text in trolleys, trucks and around bonfires, moving from group to group to imbibe as much of religious spirit as possible. Holy discourses emanating from loudspeakers dispelled the air of unease and tension at the protesting cite. The sumptuous langar of sweets, pakode, kheer, halwa, rice, roti, dal and vegetable curries served the immediate cause of pacifying the hungry rats in the stomach of thousands of poor people who barged into the community feast of the farmers.

India is a vast land, put a langar anywhere and you will have scores of people materializing almost from thin air. The Sikh community has a fabulous concept of selfless giving through their langars. The poor people from the surrounding areas thronged the site like bleating, hungry droves of sheep. Avatar Singh never had an exact idea about the extent of hunger and need in the country till he saw the skinniest of boys and girls eating that much as would pacify the hunger of a rotund farmer. He was happy and sad at the same time.

‘We really are a very poor country,’ he said to his fellow langar server.

He felt proud of being a farmer. ‘It makes me so proud that I am one of those who produce grains to feed the hungry. The more we produce, the less it is because there is so much of hunger around,’ he informed his wife over phone.

Buffeted by the protest movement, the spirit of Guruparva reached several notches higher. The protesting farmers had spared a set of clean clothes for the day. Thousands of lamps were lit on tractors, trucks, cars, jeeps and at police barricades. The laundry man profusely did voluntary service by washing heaps of clothes so that as many protestors could avail clean clothing as possible on the special occasion.

A local boy was distributing cooking gas cylinders free of cost. Someone was carrying couple of water tanks trailing behind his tractor. Another local farmer was dumping his sugarcane at the crusher set up for the purpose. Scores of farmers were offloading their vegetables in front of the community kitchen tents. A group of farmer boys was carrying huge jars of buttermilk daily in a mini carrier from their village. People pooled money in the surrounding villages to keep the supply of vegetables and milk. Everyone was habitually inclined to be a best version of himself/herself.

A few farmers used internal roads to reach the two Gurdwaras near the border. Some farmers decided to give the prayers a miss as they were not able to take bath and spare a pair of clean clothes. Of course, Avatar Singh belonged to this latter group. However, his chest was puffed up at seeing the spirit of friendliness, selfless giving and unqualified camaraderie sashaying over the camp site.

‘Vahe Guru ji da Khalsa, vahe Guru ji di Fatah!’ he found himself yelling almost involuntarily.

The clarion call of Sikh valour sneaked into a little tent behind the main line of the camp site. A group of weary farmers was settling down to open their daily routine of spirits to relieve them of boredom with life. The booze tumblers shook in their hands. They repeated the call and drank to the health of Sikh valour and pride. 

He asked his wife to light an extra lamp at their home on his behalf and walked up to the police personnel to offer prasad who tried their level best to maintain distance, both on account of their being on the opposite side of the issue and of course the pandemic. He but won’t return before giving a bear hug to one of them whom he felt will not find it too scandalous. ‘Uncleji you are mad,’ was all he could manage as the robust Sikh farmer retreated to his part of the land on the national highway. 

There were many groups, individuals, institutions and politicians who held a helpless grudge against the strong, assertive PM of India. They found an opportunity to add to anti-Modi voices by being a part of the movement. The AAP government in Delhi appealed to their workers to help the protesting farmers. Hence there they were with portable toilets, ambulances, first-aid kits and blood pressure checking facility.

A volunteer Muslim woman doctor drew Avatar’s attention.

‘Betaji tannu Wahe Guru khush rakhein!’ he placed his blessing hand on her head with moisture in his eyes.

She smiled. She was waging her own battle, the battle of a young educated Muslim woman, who wanted to scream out that I’m as much of a patriotic Indian as anyone around. He took out a 100 rupee note, circled it a few times over her head as a mark of reverence, respect and blessing and handed the money to a poor old woman begging at the camp site. The girl won’t let him go without a check up. He laughed but agreed. With the caring hands of a daughter, she measured his vitals and smiled at the state of his good health.

‘A good heart gives good health Betaji,’ he offered his life philosophy. 

The creeping winters saw many a cloth-line strung among tractor and trucks. The rations were stacked full for a long haul. However, the toilets had main problems. They made use of the empty plots and the agricultural fields off the highway. Further, the goodwill of local residents to allow them the use of their extra toilets chipped in more in symbolism than in substance. Apart from this, the ladies could avail toilet facility at fuel stations and factories in the vicinity.  

A few hundred farmers actually made inroads into the capital, avoiding barbed wires and barricades, through alternative roads and occupied a few streets in the border localities on the capital side. A kind of sandwich was formed: Farmers behind the barricades, then police, another little group of farmers, and then police again. To the Haryana side, the protestors’ campsite was stretched for at least 6 km. He would go to this Delhi side camp and listen to their leaders’ rabble rousing speeches. Something was missing. He could feel it. He could feel all was not right at that end of the movement.

At Delhi-Ghaziabad border in Ghazipur, the UP government imposed Section 144 prohibiting a gathering of more than three people. The farmers put up their very own Section 288 in reply: The entry of non-farmers is prohibited and non-interference by the police and the farmers in each other’s affairs will be welcomed. The concrete barricades were under the onslaught of rising slogans and tempers. ‘Section 288’ in large whitewash on written on the road.  

The days crept on into the chilly cavern of the famed Delhi winter that pleases and tortures in equal measure. Unseasonal rains lashed the caravan site as if in cahoots with the government. Tents leaked, bonfires went off, fuelwood went damp, and the frosty cold crept from all sides.

His teeth chattering with cold, he was still happy, ‘This is best for the wheat in the fields!’ A farmer has to think about life in terms of his crops.

The government prepared for talks to somehow draw them into negotiations. It was but more interested in creating cracks among various farmer organizations participating in the agitation. Hence the behemoth of a conglomeration tried their level best to keep its constituents united with no central body to keep a leash on the errant factions. The farm leadership faced equal challenge to keep the opposition political parties from making it a platform to voice their pain and suffering against the Modi government.

The Sikh fraternity abroad was leaving no stone unturned in voicing their support to the agitation. The sumptuous feast of Gurdwara Sahib Riverside California and Khalsa Panth Society Canada left such a long trail of culinary delights that it could beat even the best eating points in the Delhi NCR. Dry fruits were consumed in fistful gulps by the hungry hordes. Only now Avatar Singh realised how prosperous and well settled the Sikh diaspora was.

‘They seem to be digging gold there but at least haven’t forgotten their roots,’ he said to a farmer serving on the counter of dry fruits.

The tongues that hadn’t tasted even buttermilk in their lives now gulped down badam and kesar milk. If it means so much to so many, let there be many more such movements that fetch such pleasant first-timers in the life of the poorest people.  

The Nihangs pitched their camp in front of the TDI Mall where their huge, muscular horses looked around with unease and arrogance. The blue-robed warrior monks moved around with protective majesty. They have been the protectors of faith across the centuries when their faith was persecuted. The legacy still survives. Avatar Singh considered farming as his religion. Now looking at the muscular arm of the faith, it appeared really impressive to him. He even thought of turning a Nihang but then dismissed the idea because it was too late for such a revolutionary turnaround. 

The long forgotten recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission, laying the foundations of a self-sustaining peasantry, appeared to again sneak into the theoretical discussions on the issue. Most of these protesters, who now braved the cold in a trolley-tarpaulin camp, understood and believed that these laws would expose them to merciless corporations, their bargaining power going down the drain, the MSP system becoming redundant of its own in just three four years.

Avatar Singh always kept an eye on the spare time to go and attend the explanations of a still older teacher farmer, who appeared to know more than the rest. To make it easier, the grand old farmer explained the issues in a simple manner for the benefit of illiterate farmers like him. The grey wise educated farmer was telling them:

‘Why is a 4 acre landholder from eastern UP or Bihar working as a farm labourer on the land of a farmer who has just 1 acre in Punjab or Haryana? The Agricultural Price Marketing Committees (APMCs) are gone in Bihar since 2017. They don’t get Minimum Support Price (MSP) on any crop. In Punjab and Haryana at least wheat and paddy sell at the MSP, leaving them with surplus money to lead a life of dignity above the level of the cattle in their barn. Now tell me, what serves the cause of the farming community in India? Is it in raising the income level of all the farmers in the rest of India to the level of Punjab and Haryana farmers or pulling down Punjab and Haryana farmers to the low income level of the farmers in the rest of the country? Instead of uplifting the status of the farmers across India to the level of Punjab-Haryana farmers, they are cutting down us to the level of the poorest farmers across the country. We can speak against injustice because we have something left with us after filling up our stomach.  

The dilution of the essential commodities regulations will surely result in Punjab and Haryana farmers getting a miserly portion of what they get now. The setting up of free trading markets as rivals to the government operated APMCs will definitely see the demise of regulated markets acting as a shock absorber for the farmers against the vagaries of market forces. In the new private markets, there won’t be any taxes and levies. It is a good incentive to begin with, but once the APMCs have been left redundant and closed down, the unchecked forces of rampant freewheeling trade will clamp down its authority. In Punjab and Haryana, the APMC levy has been used to strengthen the market and procurement infrastructure for many decades.’

Once in a while, the farmers would get agitated a bit more and would start ramming tractors into the barricades to almost no effect on the concrete bulwarks. It, but, left lots of gape-toothed, angry looks on the smoky, fuming tractors after the impact.

The Bhim Army Chief arrived to support the farmers. He is a gutsy young man raising the banner for the revival of Dalit pride. Many women farmers raised slogans in his support. As if getting a fresh revolutionary impetus, some over-jealous farmers again tried to breach the barricade and dissipate their revolutionary spirit. After this they would shout slogans more loudly and later eat more to fill up the spent reserves of energy. A farmer is entitled to eat as much as possible of his produce. The stomach has to be full, only then it will bear strength to tolerate empty pockets. 

A busy thoroughfare of land-tillers, agriculturists and farm labourers sticking to the well-starched khadi of the ruling government like ticks and mites adamantly pitch their camp on a dog’s ear. The government was trying its level best to shake them off. But the dying bonfires in the wee hours of the freezing nights would resume their fervour and warmth with the dawn bringing trolleys laden with heaps of wood to keep the bonfires going. The mega-kitchens of the Gurdwaras amply supplied fuel to the emptying tanks of the protesting farmers as well as the sickened humanity of nearby slums, beggars, homeless wanderers, pavement dwellers and mendicant friars. All and sundry took long, long draughts from the tumbler brimming with the Sikh spirit of charity.

A youth had his back tattooed with the names of the martyrs, the farmers who had lost their lives during the campaign. Avatar Singh gave it a very keen look. Now he missed it, the studies.

‘I should have attended school for at least a few months. May be that would have allowed me to read the names of these brave men. But at least this young man has a broad and long back that can adjust many more names. Not that I want many people to die, but in case we keep sitting here for years then this man is the perfect billboard for keeping these names alive on his back,’ he told his neighbour as he sipped hot tea, allowing his overworked body a few moments of relaxation.

In the background, a farmer leader thundered into the mike, ‘Brothers, choke all the road arteries entering Delhi. Sarkar sun lo, Kisan Ayog banana padega. You have commissions for cows but not for human beings called farmers. Take back the dark kisan kanoon. Make MSP binding under the law.’

The heavily clogged artery left the peak time traffic in disarray in the national capital. In reaction, the legislators and ministers belonging to the ruling party called the protesters Khalistanis, the stooges of Pakistan and China, Urban Naxals and scores of other names that connote seditious radicals. The farmers in turn planned to further choke Delhi’s arteries linking it with the neighbouring states. News spread that farmers and members of the civil societies have been arrested trying to enter Delhi and cases slammed against them for violating prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. A lot of BCs and ‘fucking’ abuses clattered like a bullet burst.

Things aren’t joyful somehow in the congested corridors of survival. Majority of us are looking for escape routes from the killing boredom of life. We are on the lookout for newer, broader identities. Carried by the same spirit, many female homemakers, professionals of various sorts and even students came rallying behind the cause. Ms Khan ran the medical camp we have already mentioned. She looked completely comfortable with chilly nights in the trolleys, almost no privacy and the absence of all basic amenities. She spent her free time—left after dealing with the issues of fatigue, digestion problems, pain in the feet, headache, BP and fever—with young students giving them lessons in science. You no longer complain about such things if you feel joy in doing something. Everything depends on the state of one’s mind. With a frowning state of mind, the similar situation would turn an intolerable hell. 

Shaheen Bagh’s Dadi, famous for her civil disobedience movement against the CAA bill, was prevented from joining the protesters. Bilkis Bano reached the Singhu Border but was stopped by the police from joining the protesters. ‘I am the daughter of a farmer and have come to support the farmers!’ she half muttered and half shouted.  

Bent with age, two grandmothers in their 80s became the poster-women of the farm activists. A restless and ever-agitated Bollywood heroine, her nerves on a twitchy edge, mistook her as the Shaheen Bagh Dadi and triggered a spate of ugly tweets with a fellow star from Punjab. The protesting farmers condemned her to the capacity of their lungs.

‘I will throw a bucket of melted jaggery on her to turn her sweeter!’ Avatar Singh also yelled as the younger protestors made him understand the entire episode.

‘She is so acidic that even jaggery will turn bitter,’ a young chap remarked.

The Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, managing the movement, devised numerous measures to keep the movement peaceful and apolitical in nature. Now this is what irked the government the most. An apolitical movement is worse than even an armed rebellion to the political class. A politician always has some soft corner in his heart even for the staunchest political opponent. They but cannot digest any apolitical person, movement, institution or for that matter anything apolitical in nature. They feel insulted if something apolitical in nature walks in the public domain to gather mass attention.

The government in retaliation tried to hatch a narrative that only Punjab and Haryana farmers were involved in the protests. In addition, the list of cases being slapped on the agitating farmers increased substantially.

‘If speaking for our farming rights means being a Khalistani to you, then I am a proud Khalistani!’ Avatar Singh barked into the camera as he prevailed over the mêlée to show his bearded, bushy-eyebrowed face into the camera for which many others jostled to become a verified part of history that was being made.

Youngsters clapped, whistled and shouted ‘Bole so nihal’. Avatar Singh was triumphant. However, his enthusiasm was punctured a bit as an authoritative looking leader forbade him from using the word Khalistani too much.    

A Car rally, Punjab Kisan Morcha Rally, in support of the movement took place in Canada. The Sikh diaspora in Australia and the UK took over the baton and raised dust in the countryside for many miles. They yelled out their enthusiasm. That’s how identities will reshuffle to take various shapes during the coming times in a global village.

‘There should have been tractor rallies there instead of these cars that are of no use in farming,’ Avatar Singh had his expert opinion as he expressed his disappointment after watching the WhatsApp video on a young farmer’s phone. 

The Canadian PM Trudeau irked the Indian government by mentioning farm protests and requesting the government to pay heed to the humanistic demands of the farm protesters. The Indian foreign ministry hit back. Well, it shows Sikhs have a nice influence in Canada.

The poor famished children from many slums ate langers day in and out. They must have tasted the real food for the first time in their life. Hardly any tart voice was heard to discourage their gluttony. After all, it was their chance to assuage the hunger of the soul. A lot of them would get a normal weight for the first time in their entire life. The community kitchen spirit of the sardars is a kind river quenching the thirst and fulfilling the needs of all irrespective of caste, class, creed or religion.

In a massive show of strength, the Transport Unions threatened to stop the flow of essential commodities across the states in north India. The All India Motor Transport Congress represents 10 million truckers.

‘We are the backbone! They cannot afford to ignore our demands!’ a burly Sikh hollered at the top of his voice, as he led a tiny group of women and children who held flags and shouted ‘Bole so nihaal’ to his declaration.

An influential central minister condemned the minimum support price mechanism, ‘If the MSP is sanctioned by law, our exports may turn non-competitive because the MSP is higher than international prices. How will the exporters buy at higher price to export at a lower one?’

The farming experts supporting the movement pointed out the billions of dollars of subsidies given to the farming sector by the governments abroad.

The supply and demand scenario in the open farm sector is expected to level down the price of most of the prices. The problem is: Already the Indian farmer is so distressed, how will he fare under the open market scenarios. The farmers demand that any sale below—of any of the 23 crops—the MSP should be termed illegal under the law. The government wants to do away with the middleman. But farmers see it as a prelude to the large scale backing out of the government from the scene, leaving the illiterate, simple farmers face to face with strong, witty, wealthy corporate. The small middlemen will be replaced by the corporate behemoth.

Groups of farmers watched television debates at night, clapping when their representative made a good point. To Avatar Singh all this looked unnecessary exercise. He felt he had the final say on this:

‘Why make it so complex. It’s very simple. See, I run my household, so I know what is good or bad for me. If my neighbour makes his sets of rules to run my household without my asking for it and comes to order me to start doing the things his way, I’m supposed to box his ears. It’s the same here. We are the farmers. Modi is not a farmer. What does he know about farming and our problems? He should have talked to us if he is so eager to run our household as per his ideas. The government has no ears that we can box. But we can block the roads. And that’s what we are doing.’

Anti-stubble burning laws put the farmers in a dock of criminality. A medium built Sikh entrepreneur comes out of the makeshift two-floored dormitory made of planks in a big tarpaulin-covered truck and points to the hay-made sofas put up there invitingly to any media personnel. Isn’t it that the media pours more fumes over the stubble-burning farmers and ignores the worst local sources of pollution in Delhi?

‘We get demonized as stubble-burning monsters! I have fixed a jugaad machine to make these sofas from hay, so that they can sip tea here in Delhi in the clean air! Even though I cannot smell any clean air here even without our stubble burning at this time!’ he illustrated his part in the movement. 

Vapours from a makeshift row of temporary washrooms kissed the freezing air. Trolleys stuffed with groceries, wood, cooking gas cylinders, batteries and dung-cakes stuck like tiny irritants on the ears of the big animal. Portable, battery-operated speakers for devotional music and speeches of the farmer leaders added to the pitchy vocals of the fiery speeches. There were stacks of thousands of Punjabi newspapers to keep their morale up with sufficient coverage and make up for the silence of almost the entire electronic media and even the print one that appeared to have gone with the government. 

Tents set up randomly to adjust to every square yard of the highway and the pathways near around. Bathing and washing went on full crescendo. Taut cloth-lines and well-fixed cot of strings inside wire-mesh covered trolleys kept the temporary settlement under a tight leash and bestowed a spirit of permanence. The government looked equally tight-fisted.  

The government vaguely hinted that it might be open to some amendments to the three contentious legislations. The joint statement of the farmer organisations hollered back that they want the repeal of these laws at the least. So the talks just dragged, each round’s fate decided even before it started.

Diaspora diplomacy was full swing. A large car with a big farmer union flag in the front and a little Canada flag at the back, with a plum-looking happy, healthy and prosperous Sikh family in between, left Avatar Singh in deep thought. 

‘They had the guts to leave agriculture and make that much money as hasn’t been earned in their entire previous generations. Is agriculture worth fighting for to the level we are doing?’ he had his doubts.

Who is even bothered about the rudimentary economics of the brutal survival game in the occupation of agriculture? Hundreds of thousands impoverished farmers have committed suicide under the burden of debt. Things are just numbers to economists. To them the purchase at the MSP results in high inflation. One percentage point increase in the MSP creates 15-basis point increase in inflation. Higher MSPs topple the RBI’s inflation targets. The MSP system overlooks demand and global prices and creates market distortions. Compulsory MSPs will turn the Indian agrarian system incompetent because the international and domestic prices are lower than the government-assured prices. The MSPs unduly incentivized food grains over pulses and oilseeds, resulting in overutilization of land and water. The WTO rules limit the governmental procurement to operate subsidized food programmes and other schemes at 10% of the total value of agro produce at 1986-88 prices in dollars. 

These are the studio smart intelligentsia voices that are in fact opinion makers at the government level. They are the ones who are the backbone of legislations like the farm laws. Sadly, almost all of them have never visited a real agricultural farm in their entire lives. 

To begin with, the governmental rebuttal was off the mark and rhetorical just like one chases away a fly from one’s face in mild irritation. Its ministers and spokespersons called the protestors as Khalistani sympathizers and Congress-supported groups. The present government has been very successful in selling an ultra-nationalistically hatched mindset that stereotypes any criticism of the government as antinational.

It appeared a big chasm between two opposing forces: Punjabi and Hindu Jat farmers’ attachment to their land Vs Gujarati craze for business, trade, commerce and stock market. Can reforms in the latter be brought about, keeping the stakeholders in the dark? The reforms were slammed in the farmers’ face through a brutal majority without building any consensus or holding consultations with the stakeholders. The strongman state of Modi seemed to believe that the state knows it better about the interest of the subjects. No wonder, many a dissenting notes got criminalized. The Punjabi farmers have so far avoided voting for the BJP. The urban elites are mesmerized with political Hindutva. But among all this, nobody can question the individual popularity of PM Modi.

If private trading in agriculture produce is allowed, the government-controlled markets will surely collapse in the face of free markets. They will slowly lose relevance as the free market will offer better prices initially for a couple of years, leaving the APMCs empty and slowly the government will leave the area. The field will be then open for the demand and supply game, wherein surely the farmers will get the least possible in the chain. The contract-farming law will imperil the land-holding rights of the farmers. The farmers have been slammed with huge penalties for stubble burning under the anti-pollution ordinance. Instead of providing subsidized power to farmers, the government is for giving direct cash payments to them to offset electricity costs. What is the use of making it so tedious if the government’s intention is fair? The disposal of the disputes between farmers and traders at the magistrate level hardly leaves any doubt about who will use clout to manipulate the proceedings. The farmers demand the right to reach civil court in case of disputes. The farmers demand a federally fixed MSP that would criminalize any purchase by the private trader below the MSP. The government has just assured that the MSPs will stay but it isn’t ready to give any word on penalizing any trader buying the crop below the MSP. It’s not about the legislation only, rather it’s about the direction they are pushing the agrarian economy into. Where would the hapless farmers go if the last bulwarks set for their protection through ‘state-endorsed monopolized value chain intermediation’ are removed?

These were the technicalities that were beyond the cognisance of the majority of farmers like Avatar Singh. But they knew something was fishy. The legislation was a very clever plot. Poor farmers like Avatar Singh believed them to be bad for their cause simply because even the thousands of well off farmers were against the laws.

‘The soul of so many people cannot betray and lie! These are evil laws if so many of my brothers say so,’ it was enough to convince him to stay at the front during these freezing weeks at the Delhi border.  

He would have tears of pity and joy both looking at the children from the nearby slums and shanties enjoying the best meals of their life. Scrap collectors, homeless beggars and scores of other types of the underprivileged scions of humanity dived in the free give away of tea, fruits, kheer, rice, mattri, oranges, biscuits, vegetable rice, chappatis, soup, sugarcane juice, dry fruits and jalebis. It looked a brief interval of redemption. Paper plates, plastic bottles, plastic spoons and thermocol tumblers left big heaps of garbage that quickly went into massive sacks of the garbage collectors. Even garbage collectors have their good days sometime!

The blue-robed Nihang Sikhs, Khalsa Fauj, armed with swords stood guard to ensure peace near all the police barricades. Their majestic blue turbans with a metallic ring made them the proud emblems of faith. About 50-60 regal horses had been ferried in huge transport carriages. The warrior Sikhs’ presence chalked out a symbolic safety and security. Northern goshawk, Baaj, associated with tenth Sikh Guru Govind Singh was displayed on a perch at the top of a pole as a mark of tenacity and strength. Many horses were tethered among the rows of the barriers.

The company of Nihangs appeared to say, ‘We stand for safety and security. The police will have to go through us to reach the people.’

Their cooking area is sacred and only Nihangs are allowed to enter it. They maintain that weapons aren’t just for slaying and slaughter; in non-action they symbolize safety as well, a kind of deterrence.

As a proud Nihang leader smilingly told the group around: ‘Our presence means nobody will be oppressed. We keep an eye on the miscreants who may play mischief to malign the movement. Political cadres try to push their agenda through their farmer wings; we keep an eye on them. Some soldiers and decorated sportsmen with political designs also try to merge into the stream of protests. They need to be observed carefully.’

To avoid escalation of inflammatory data from the agitation site, the government cut down Internet in the area. On the Delhi side of the barricades, the farmers had a Wi-Fi gift. Somebody set up a free Wi-Fi hotspot. The login ID and the password were displayed on cardboard pieces, a kind of secret data charity by the Samaritan. The people starved of data due to poor network connectivity, call drops and the slowest of Internet ran to feast on the data charity on offer. The Internet is more significant than even the eatables, I suppose. The younger people jumped to get connected to social media.

‘If they can help it, they will store some of the Internit in their stomach as well,’ remarked Avatar Singh.

The donations from the home state Punjab and the Haryana farmers were so overwhelming that they were forced to ask them to hold the supply. Milk, paneer, cauliflower and grains lay in heaps. You cannot help it if the producer decides to be the sole consumer of his own production.

The movement was gaining momentum very swiftly. Many sports stalwarts threatened to return their medals and honours. The farmers from Maharashtra didn’t understand Punjabi but they clapped at the speeches. The language of farming pain is the same. All of them understood and felt it. Some Punjabi farmer occasionally translated the speech to his Maharashtrian brethren.

A group of Kashmiris rented a car to arrive here and lend their voice to the agitation. It was basically their own agony piggybacking the farmer agitation. The government condemned all this as the siege of national capital.

Isn’t there a piercing dichotomy in this: The FCI warehouses bursting at the seams but 15% of the population not having enough to get proper nutrition, the farmer not getting enough to cover his cost of production, and the consumers paying more than they should.

PM Modi turned even more adamant and authoritative: ‘Reforms are very much needed for a new order and to give new facilities. We cannot build the next century with the laws of the previous century.’

India got irritated over the issue of the security of its mission in London. The foreign ministry questioned the Scotland Yard why 4,000 protestors were allowed to gather in front of the Indian High Commission in London and demonstrate in support of the farm agitators in India. To the Indian state it looked a very serious matter indeed. 

Warrior Sikhs (Nihangs) were preparing Shaheedi Degh (the Sikh sacrament drink of dry fruits) ground in a mortar with a long and heavy, 20 Kg, wooden pestle. It’s a nutrition-rich drink meant to keep body and mind strong. Those who were lucky to gulp down a glass of it considered themselves invincible against the cold and Corona. Slow and steady grinding went for an hour. One man stood to hold the upper narrow end of the heavy pestle, made of sandalwood or neem trunk called salottar, while the other ground the lower thick end in the stone mortar called sunara full of cardamom, almonds, cashews, walnuts, black pepper, melon seeds. The sacrament drink contained spiritual power and physical strength both. The paste was finally squeezed through a white cloth and the drain off offered to the people. The leftovers were rolled into balls and a Nihang hurled the deliveries into the air after a spinner’s run-up. They believe this ritual removes hurdles from the path.

The farmers threatened to block the railway tracks. Social media turned out to be the unofficial sponsor of the event through village-wise WhatsApp groups, Instragam posts, Twitter hashtags and live Facebook sessions for sharing videos and photos. Many held up their selfie sticks for Facebook Lives, the popular 30 minutes programmes where anyone could act as an anchor. The elder farmers had language problems. Youngsters translated them and posted with hashtags #farmersprotest, #supportfarmers, #farmbillprotests. 

An artist put up his works on a wine shop’s shutters involving the heroics of Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, apart from jokes, political satires and revolutionary slogans. A large truck carried the poster of a weather-beaten old farmer and the flags of Australia and Canada.

The agriculture minister challenged that those who keep stuck to the status quo cannot make history. As if these farmers were pitching for making history. Making history is for the politicians. A farmer at the best can just earn his living, and even in that he needs governmental price mediation. The PM again harped that these laws are meant to make the farmers prosperous. Has anyone except the business class got prosperous in a free market economy?

Beyond governmental apathy, it was a busy and happy world with its jaggery, peanuts, wooden planks, cots, gajjaks, dates, almonds, walnuts, roasted grams, warm clothes, bedrolls, hookahs, grocery.

Salim from Jama Masjid was selling warm clothes at the minimum possible price covering his travel and daily expenses. He thought it was his contribution to the farmer’s cause. Well, this world is full of misery and there is plenty of scope for a charitable soul to satisfy its cravings.

Beating sever spells of frosty nights and sunless days with their fervent spirits, the farmers held sit-in protests at all the district headquarters in the country. Also at the main protest site at Singhu border, the farmer leaders went for a daylong hunger strike. A voracious eater, Avatar Singh found it really tough to go hungry for a day. To beat the hunger-driven boredom, he yelled slogans with extra pitch and walked up and down the thoroughfare, holding a big banner requesting the protestors not to indulge in any inappropriate behaviour and maintain the movement’s dignity.

Some posters had come up at Tikri border, another protest site, demanding the release of political activists and intellectuals like Umar Khalid, Sudha Bharadwaj, Sharjeel Imam and Anand Teltumbde. It jilted the government to the extent that many ruling party legislators started calling it a movement of anti-national forces. The farmer leaders clamped down such voices of protest of a different genre. It was strictly for the farmers, they solidly pointed out. 

The government first used force, then tried to sow seeds of dissension among the vast grouping of peasant organizations, managed media to make it sound a movement of anti-national forces and finally turned immune to them to tire them out in the cold.

On the eve of the Republic Day, Avatar Singh got to know a scary bit of information from the educated old farmer who was operating as his encyclopaedia on the issue:

‘If the private traders are allowed to procure and maintain stocks of essential commodities, they will simply hold stock and let it out at the harvest time to keep the prices low under the demand supply law. Like, they will flood the market with stocked onion when you will reach the market to sell your onion after the harvest. As there will be onions, onions everywhere, you will get a chavanni for your 1 kg produce!’

He emphatically put his frail finger on the robust farmer’s bulky chest. Avatar Singh shook under its effect.

Then arrived the fateful day of January 26, 2021. India was imbued with republican spirit. The peasant leaders had announced a tractor parade on the peripheral expressway around Delhi. They promised a perfectly well-behaved parade, though a farmer’s behaviour is very unpredictable. Hence it was a great risk that should have been avoided.

There was something fishy among the leaders of the group that had pitched its camp to the Delhi side of the border. They made extra fiery speeches, involved rougher, younger elements and seemed set for a stage-managed act. Their leaders won’t mix too much with the joint committee of the farmer leaders to the other side.

The tractor parade on the peripheral expressway had begun peacefully. The republic day parade on Rajpath was concluded with normal ceremonial fervour. Then this suspicious group got into action. They broke the barricades and almost unchecked they moved towards the Red Fort. His bumbling enthusiasm speeding a few paces ahead of his ageing bulky body, Avatar Singh found himself carried away into the mischievous gusto of these hooligans. They proceeded with fury into the national capital, breaking all promises of maintaining peace and not breaching into the city’s interior. What followed was even more deplorable. There were pictures of hooligans taking off the national flag and hoisting a religious banner on the Red Fort. It was utter chaos and criminality took over. The media awaiting with a predator’s glee preyed upon the golden footage. The nasty pictures were run and rerun thousands of times to portray farmers as seditious anti-nationals. The poor farmers had been duped. A gross generalization hypnotized the masses across India. Their nationalist spirit was wounded and the summary reaction that evening was this: ‘These are no farmers protesting for their farming rights. They are antinational hooligans!’ 

Avatar Singh tried to hold back the ruffian youth from climbing the national flag pole. Even in his illiteracy well fed by his simple village life, he felt its importance and respect it should be given. There were so many boys from the village serving in the army. The national flag was something he really respected. He was hit on the head from behind. It was a heavy blow. He turned back and saw a young tramp aiming another strike at him if he protested further. The aged farmer moved away, blood dripping over his jersey and chaddar.

The picture was clear for everyone to see through the lacunae. Why was this rebellious group allowed to break through the barricades at the Singhu border and then allowed to travel almost unchallenged by the Delhi Police for 20 kilometres? It was of course a political set-up to malign the hitherto peaceful farmer movement. The entire country was seething with anger. There was gross generalization. People condemned and spat at the name of farmers.

The facade of Red Fort looked down with broken spirits. Avatar Singh slowly walked up to a group of policemen to court arrest. Something had snapped in him. He had tears for the unnecessarily maligned farmers as well as for the national flag. A smile but lurked behind all this blood and shock. He was aware of his loyalty to the farmer cause. However, his smile was cracked by a whiplash served by the forces that always operate beyond the common man’s understanding. These are the forces that decide our fates, while we hardly have any clue about how and why they are doing all this. The State of course always wins, if it decides to win at any cost, especially against its own citizens.