“Neither colonial nor Independent India had organised a Farmers’ Commission since the earlier Commissions are all related to agriculture and not particularly to the problems of farmers. Now that the government has changed the name of the Ministry to Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, as recommended by NCF, it is time that farmers’ welfare receive the same attention as big as industries”.
— Dr M S Swaminathan, in an interview to Organiser in the issue dated July 4, 2017
For a change, farmers’ issues received due importance with the unprecedented Kisan Long March organised by farmers in Maharashtra. At the same time there was a protest going on in Kannur District of Kerala by Paddy farmers who were protesting against the acquisition of their land by the State Government there for more than a year. Though both were the farmers’ agitations and both the concerns were genuine, the responses of respective Governments and the elite intellectuals of Bharat to both these agitations were astonishingly contradictory. They also tell the real story behind the apathy and neglect of Agriculture Sector in the Post-Independent Bharat.
The Bharatiya Kisan Sabha had taken out a 200 km Long March of about twelve thousand strong peasants and Vanvasis on foot from Nashik to Mumbai on March 6. The media initially ignored it but started giving it coverage only on March 11 when it reached outskirts of Mumbai. Many urban intellectuals also started celebrating the agitation on social media without having any clue about the Long-March. While doing so some did not even forget to claim it as a strength of Communists on the ground, though being defeated electorally and ideologically all over Bharat. Though the agitation was carried out under the
banner of Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) affiliated Kisan Sabha, in reality it was the grass-roots level planning and spontaneous response of the local cooperatives and orgaisations of farmers that made this agitation successful. The way Devendra Fadanvis Government responded to the March by not only sensitively dealing with their concerns but also by forming a committee to look into their key demand of ownership rights of forest patches to the Vanvasis cultivating them that is to be resolved in six months.
On the contrary, the Vayal Kilikal (Paddy Birds) agitation in Keezhattoor of Kannur District in Kerala has been going on for more than a year by again farmers to save their land patches from acquisition by the Government for Road construction. Keezhattoor is a typical party village controlled by the CPI(M) and therefore, these protesters were obviously associated with the Communist Party. No Kisan Sabha went in their support, their agitation did not get any media publicity and there was no one from the Kerala Government even to speak to them. Finally on March 14, they were responded with burning of their tents by the Communist cadres, as they usually do when the Party is questioned. The protesters also faced the brutal oppression and arrest by the police. Again, national media went into oblique silence over this ghastly act.
These agitations lead us to two stark conclusions. Firstly, the urban Bharat has completely lost the touch with the concerns of agrarian Bharat. Since Independence, the way we have uprooted our rural economy and society from its land relations while focusing on the so-called modern temples of development is immense and no piecemeal approach can resolve that.
Secondly, it also proved that the communists are the last people who can lead farmers or labourers with genuine concerns. As their thought itself is not connected with the roots of this land, their action obviously cannot be. The only hope is the people, organisations and political parties who understand Bharatiya ethos and do not use farmers for their political ends.
The message of farmers’ agitations is loud and clear that rural distress, forced migration and exodus of farmers from agricultural activity are the real issues and we have to think about entire rural society in a holistic way.
@PrafullaKetkar
