NEW DELHI – Under a rain-soaked tarpaulin, half a dozen elderly women bake roti on a wood-burning pan – flatten the dough, turning brown bread from dawn until the sun sets in Delhi’s evening smoke. Everyone who walks in is served rice and cooked vegetables and, to wash it off, a cumin flavored drink.
Across the road, Jagjeet Singh, a sturdy man with a large compartment and a light purple turban, builds a sturdy pot of milk coffee from 5am to 5pm. In the evening, Mr. Singh over to hot milk seasoned with turmeric and cloves – good for the cold, good for the day’s exhaustion. He goes through about 260 liters of milk daily.
“Now it’s coffee,” he says as his pot comes to a boil and he leans over to sniff. “You can even smell it from a helicopter!”
Music, games and free stuff, from fried snacks to thermal underwear to bottles of almond hair oil, can be found at every corner. But the scenes that stretch for miles in the Indian capital do not come from a fair. They form one of the largest sustained protests the country has seen in decades, continued through persistent rains and dozens of deaths attributed to farmers and the Indian media to the weather, disease or suicide.
Tens of thousands of farmers have been suffocating the city’s four main access points for six weeks now. They challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has crushed all other opposition and stands as the dominant political power of the country, over his attempt to reform how farming has been practiced in India for decades. The protests have led to claims in northern India at a time when the country’s economy is already in shambles.
The protesters demanded that Mr. Modi should repeal recent farming laws that would reduce the government’s role in agriculture and provide more space for private investors. The government says the new laws will derail farmers and private investment, which will lead to growth. Farmers are skeptical and fear that the removal of state protection that they already consider inadequate will leave them at the mercy of corporate greed.
“They sold everything. Only the farmers are left, “said 18-year-old Ajay Veer Singh, who has been protesting with his 67-year-old grandfather since it began in November. “Now they want to sell the farmers to their business friends as well.”
In Singhu, a village about 40 km from the center of Delhi where Singh was camped, there was no sign that the protesters were tiring. Between rain showers, which significantly exacerbated the impact of winter temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, young protesters tried to drain pools while elderly people tried to stay dry. At night, they curled up in the back of their covered trucks, or at hundreds in large, often leaky shelters.
The farmers turned a stretch of highway of about 10 miles into the site of a well-organized community. Many of the farmers are Sikh, and they said that their beliefs and sense of tradition helped them to make sacrifices to maintain the protests.
The protesters, who according to one leader were estimated at about 50,000, arranged a rotation to ensure their numbers did not shrink. If protesters get tired, or get sick, they regularly arrange for their villages to be replaced before leaving the site.
Mr Singh said about 5,000 people from his village of 14,500 in the Faridkot district of Punjab had joined the protest, nearly a thousand of them. When asked if he is nervous about his grandfather getting sick, or if he becomes infected with the coronavirus, he smiles.
“My grandfather is not afraid of corona,” he said. “He fears for our future.”
The protests have exposed the serious reality of inequality in much of the country.
More than 60 per cent of the 1.3 billion people in India are still mainly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, although the sector accounts for only about 15 per cent of the country’s economic production. Their dependence only increased after Covid-19 hit the urban economy hard, sending millions of workers back to their villages. Debt and bankruptcies have been driving farmers to high suicide rates for years.
Government support to farmers, and market regulation, with guaranteed minimum prices for certain essential crops, helped India overcome the severe famine of the 1960s to produce a surplus grain in recent years. But with the fact that India has been liberalizing its economy in recent decades, Mr. Modi – who wants to see India’s economy double by 2024 – plays such a big role for the government as no longer sustainable.
Farmers, however, say they are struggling even with the existing protection. They believe that market-friendly laws will eventually eliminate regulatory support and leave it robbed. India’s weakened economy offers them little chance of another existence.
“The laws are a bad attempt at liberalization. You just ordained them without thinking of farmers, ”said Vikas Rawal, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who is studying agriculture. “What you need to do is make farming affordable by getting a balance between public support, private investment and ecological issues.”
Initially, the government of Mr. Modi tries to deceive the protesters as deceptive, fueled by bitter opposition or even foreign hands – a tactic against previous waves of demonstrations. More recently, the government’s willingness to negotiate indicates that it is against a very organized and motivated movement.
As several rounds of discussions failed, the farmers threatened to drive into the capital with their tractors. Mr. Modi’s ministers have offered concessions on some issues, such as exempting farmers from fines under a new air pollution law. But the farmers insist on nothing more than repealing the laws and setting the minimum prices.
With each passing week, the farmers have become bitter against a government that is holding on while protesters gather in the midst of a pandemic. Protest leaders say about 60 of their members died of disease or suicide, although an exact figure could not be determined.
“I only have one message for him,” Harjinder Singh, 48, a ninth-generation farmer, said of Mr. Modi said. “‘Fear God.'”
Despite the problems, the protesters found ways to pull support together. Some have built extensive stages, large and small, in the tent city of Singhu, where farm leaders and politicians can hold rallies. During interruptions in the speeches, the organizers read the list of the latest donations from all over India and the world. Gifts were also sent by farmers from other parts of the country, from pineapples to almonds.
Protesters, who are technically proficient, spread videos and photos on social media to keep the crowds in the villages strong again and to make the donations come.
Up and down the protest line, music blows from the sound systems installed on the tractors, seeping out of the openings of the many tents. In one corner, an improvised gym has been set up before being run by a support group, a ‘farmers’ center’ offering free necessities such as toothpaste, thermal underwear and soap for baths and laundry. In some places there are even laundry stalls with washing machines.
Volunteers at medical tents take care of mild illnesses – paracetamol for headaches, amlodipine for blood pressure. “Diabetes is the worst,” said Manisha Sharma, 27, a paramedic who attended one medical tent.
Despite the scale of the crowd and the chaos of so many people surviving in the cold and mud, the protesters try to remain calm, wary of provocations that could give the government the pretext to discredit the movement or in the name of the law suppress. and order.
“Last night we caught a young local who stole a cellphone,” said Harjot Singh, a protester who helped serve rice at one of the food tents. They let him go without punishment, he added.
In interviews, many of the Sikh protesters portrayed farming and their struggle for justice as a duty, and the sacrifice and organization that made the protests possible as a religion.
“It’s cold and it’s hard to arrange water for a bath every morning,” says Shabek Singh, dressed in a deep blue robe and a large round turban. “But we’re not going anywhere. We will make it our temple. ”