Disha Ravi is a name that has garnered international headlines in recent weeks due to her arrest for sharing a “toolkit” she created for those who wished to participate in India’s farmers’ protest. Ravi is no stranger to protesting and activism, as she is also the founder of India’s Fridays for Future climate movement, led by Greta Thunberg globally, and, as a result, has become a familiar face among environmental activists in the last three years. Her online “toolkit” listed peaceful ways the public could support the farmers’ protests. The Indian government responded by charging 22-year old Disha Ravi with sedition and criminal conspiracy. Many see Ravi’s arrest as an example of how India’s majority party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Modi handle dissent within their country, and as a result, Ravi has amassed international support, with Greta Thunberg and Meena Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris’ niece, tweeting in support of Ravi’s bail from arrest.
India and China have grown to become two regional and economic superpowers which can be largely credited to their economic success and has, as a result, caused conflict at their shared border. The China-India border has witnessed waves of tension in recent years, with the two countries competing to build their own infrastructure at the border, also known as the Line of Actual Control. Although India and China’s rate of economic growth have been similar, leading to increased competitiveness between the two countries, arguments can be made that their political strategies are converging as well. This is evident in China’s emphasis on homogeneity among their population, and in the policies of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the BJP, which have been known to encourage Hindu nationalism since the party gained control of the Indian legislative and executive branches of government in 2014. An integral part of both countries’ economic and political policies to further themselves in the global sphere is the privatization of state-owned enterprises to modernize their economies. Both India and China have opted to gradually privatize state-owned enterprises (SOEs), as they both believe that privatization will lead to profit from the SOEs and will improve efficiency. In China, privatization has come about through the consolidation of state-owned enterprises by allowing external shareholders to supervise the SOEs. The transformation of China’s primarily agrarian economy to a modernized, competitive economic hegemon is due to such reforms. However, these waves of privatization can lead to the elimination of government incentives for production in private sectors. One such example is the agriculture sector in India, which has found it imperative to combat Modi’s desire for privatization through months of protest in India’s capital.
Over sixty percent of India’s population (1.3 billion people) depend on agriculture for their income, although agriculture only amounts to 15 percent of the economy’s output. After the coronavirus pandemic, many people were forced to return to their villages and resume farming to support their families. Even before the pandemic, rates of debt and resulting rates of suicide were on the rise among Indian farmers, due to diminishing yields and higher changes of bankruptcies. Amidst such situations, Prime Minister Modi passed into law three policies that privatized the agriculture industry and allowed private businesses to control the sector, thereby removing many of the regulations in place from the public government to subsidize farmers. Each law aims to deregulate one of three parts in the farming sector: sales, prices, and storage of goods. These laws aim to modernize the farming economy and produce more economic output, as China’s economy has. However, many critique these laws with the reasoning that such actions can diminish the democracy of India and create more stark inequality in the country, especially considering the way these bills were passed. Parliament held no significant debate over the bills and rushed to pass them, and no farmers were consulted before the passage of the bill.
From the farmers’ perspective, the government’s decreased role in this sector will leave them at the mercy of insatiable corporations, which would only intensify the financial and social pressures placed on farmers which have created high rates of bankruptcy and suicide. Farmers will no longer be the recipients of any government subsidies nor any other help from the government to supplement their agricultural income. Before the passage of these laws, farmers sold their yields in state-sanctioned marketplaces, called mandis. Protesting farmers, particularly from the states of Punjab and Haryana, worry that the new laws will make the mandi system obsolete and as a result, will remove their government-sanctioned safety, the Minimum Support Price (MSP), that ensured that farmers would be paid a certain amount, regardless of the market or weather conditions that would cause their incomes to be unstable through the year. Without the MSP, the farmers are afraid that they will be forced to follow private companies that are not required to subsidize the farmers in such a way. Modi has promised that the MSP, as it is not mentioned in the new laws, will not disappear, but farmers are skeptical and are demanding to have that condition fulfilled in writing.
In this past year, Modi has amassed much criticism for what has been regarded as policies intended to promote Hindu nationalism. An example of this is the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which granted amnesty and Indian citizenship to most religious minorities except Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Another prominent example is the controversial treatment of Kashmiris, where a territorial conflict with neighboring Pakistan has led to human rights abuses by the Indian government ranging from extrajudicial killing, rape, torture, and kidnappings. Now, the BJP government struggles to quell the farmers’ protests in response to a series of laws, intended to modernize and privatize the agriculture sector, just as China has done. Much of India’s population belongs to rural areas and depends on farming as their source of livelihood. Droughts, the pandemic, and now new regulations have weakened the farmers’ ability to generate a satisfactory profit. These circumstances have led to mass uprisings in India, as laws in China are not guaranteed to work for other nations, including India, especially when the two nations have a stark difference in political systems.
With such a large portion of the world’s second-most populous country dependent on agriculture, the number of people protesting the reforms exceeded 250 million people, one of the largest protests in human history. First, local protests began in local areas of Punjab and Haryana, and thereafter, for more impact, a new movement began called Dilhi Chalo (translation: Let’s go to Delhi), which started a nationwide protest in the country. From November 2020 to January 2021, mostly all protests were peaceful, with large groups of people gathered in India’s capital, New Delhi.
Many of these peaceful protests were met with actions that have been consistent in other places of resistance in the country, such as Kashmir and with the passage of the CAA bill. Many prominent activists have been arrested and police have engaged in brutality with water cannons, tear gas, and batons. In addition, the government has blocked the internet where demonstrations are being held. The protests turned violent when farmers entered the capital on Republic Day, January 26th, 2021, with tractors to dismantle police barricades and stormed into the Red Fort. The protestors deviated from the predetermined route of protest known to the Delhi Police to reach the Red Fort and place farmer unions and religious flags at the monument. Many farmers’ unions and prominent activists have condemned these acts of violence and encourage the national government and the rest of the country to judge the protests and the sentiments of the protestors by how the protests have been conducted before then and even until now.
This long sustained protest has not been without any communication between the farmers and the national government. A total of eleven talks have taken place between the two parties (as of January 2021), and they have all been inconclusive, resulting in the escalation of the protest as promised by many of the protestors. The farmers’ organizations are unwilling to accept anything from the Agriculture Minister besides the repeal of the three laws, while the Agriculture Minister says he cannot provide more than an 18-month suspension of the laws. No date has been set for another set of talks between the two parties, particularly after the violence of Republic Day.
Rural sectors of India have experienced increasing rates of bankruptcy and suicide over the last few decades. The distribution of wealth has not been equal, and the wealth generated from economic growth has primarily been funneled into building infrastructure in the big cities, and little focus is given to agrarian populations. The farmers’ bills seem like the last straw for these rural populations and have now chosen to fight back against governments who in the name of privatization, want to leave them at the hands of avaricious corporations, who they believe will have no obligation to protect the farmers and other rural workers. As Modi and his government struggle to stifle the protests and with neither side resistant to compromise, it is hard to say how much longer these protests will continue. Although the arrests of protestors and the blockage of internet and electricity have become common now during times of protest, the farmers’ protests will serve as proof of what India’s democracy will look like under the BJP.