Why are Farmers Protesting?

Everything that the Government does these days is hailed as ‘historic’. But will the ‘historic’ farm reforms turn into historic blunders like the earlier Demonetisation, GST, and the lockdown?

The distrust for the Government is such that farmers are unwilling to accept the Prime minister’s assurances at face value. The Prime Minister has claimed that the opposition have been misleading the nation on farm bills; that his heart bleeds for farmers and his Government will never do away with the Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime. The fact is that the three ordinances, now approved by Parliament without much scrutiny, do not make any mention of doing away with the MSP or procurement of foodgrains by the Government.

But farmers, still waiting to see their income double by 2022 as promised by the BJP and Narendra Modi in 2014, are demanding MSP to be made into a legal right. It is fine for the PM to say that farmers are now free to sell their produce anywhere and at whatever price they like to anyone. But can the Government guarantee that prices will not tumble, that private corporate bodies and traders will not form a cartel and squeeze the farmers? And if the PM is so sincere about giving farmers higher prices, why not make it a law that prices for agriculture produce cannot be lower than MSP determined by the Government?

From vegetable growers to coffee planters, from apple growers to rice farmers, the experience has been that retailers, exporters and people who have added value to the produce by processing and marketing them, have made windfall profits. The farmers and the consumers have both been left in the lurch.

It is by some accounts the world’s biggest protest. Since November, tens of thousands of Indian farmers have driven their tractors towards New Delhi and are now camped out on the highways around its periphery. They refuse to leave until the government overturns a new set of agricultural laws they claim will deregulate crop pricing and devastate their earnings by exposing them to exploitation from large corporations.

Along New Delhi’s borders with the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the protest sites have turned into makeshift villages with their own schools, kitchens and hospitals. But with tractor queues stretching to around 25km, and with the technology-averse elderly making up a sizeable portion of the protestors, union leaders speaking on stages have been struggling to disseminate accurate and up-to-date information to the vast crowds.

"Land is everything they have, if you’re taking that away they’re going to do everything to save it"

The Year Ahead 2021

A farmer rests during a tractor rally to protest against the newly passed farm bills, on a highway on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, January 7, 2021.

It is by some accounts the world’s biggest protest. Since November, tens of thousands of Indian farmers have driven their tractors towards New Delhi and are now camped out on the highways around its periphery. They refuse to leave until the government overturns a new set of agricultural laws they claim will deregulate crop pricing and devastate their earnings by exposing them to exploitation from large corporations.

Along New Delhi’s borders with the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the protest sites have turned into makeshift villages with their own schools, kitchens and hospitals. But with tractor queues stretching to around 25km, and with the technology-averse elderly making up a sizeable portion of the protestors, union leaders speaking on stages have been struggling to disseminate accurate and up-to-date information to the vast crowds.

This served as the impetus for a team of Indian artists, writers and agricultural workers to create the Trolley Times—a bi-weekly newspaper, now on its seventh edition, which aims to “voice the truth of the farmers' protest”.

Deriving its name from the trolley— the trailer of the tractor that farmers have now repurposed into mobile homes for the duration of the protest—the publication has a circulation of 7,500 and is printed in Hindi and Punjabi, with select editions also translated into English. Handed out at six demonstration sites, the newspaper is a mix of protest information and strategy, interviews with union and community leaders, as well as games, poetry and essays.

- Anjali Agrawal