Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scrapping of the laws farmers say threaten their livelihoods, comes across as insufficient to win their votes now.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces key elections in the coming year, but the response to his u-turn in India’s rural north has been less than positive.
In the village of Mohraniya, located in the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, farmer Guru Sevak Singh said that he amongst others in the area have lost faith in Modi and BJP.
Singh said, “Today Prime Minister Modi realized that he was committing blunder, but it took him a year to recognize this and only because he now knows farmers will not vote for his party ever again”.
The matter is deeply personal for this young farmer as his 19-year-old brother Guruvinder was killed in October when a car drove into a crowd of protesters fighting against the farm legislation, one of eight people who lost their lives in violence related to the farmers’ uprising.
Protests have been carried out by thousands of agricultural workers outside the capital New Delhi and beyond for over a year, ignoring the pandemic to disrupt traffic to put pressure on Modi and his party who say that the new laws were crucial to modernize the sector.
Holding a picture of his deceased brother and crying, Singh told Reuters, “Today I can announce that my brother is a martyr”.
He added, “My brother is among those brave farmers who sacrificed their lives to prove that the government was implementing laws to destroy the agrarian economy”.
Junior home minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra is in police custody in relation to the incident.
Ajay Mishra Teni said at the time that his son was not in the car and that it was being driven by “our driver” and that the car had lost control and hit the farmers after “miscreants” pelted it with stones and attacked it with sticks and swords.
Farmer’s Protest
Back in 2020, Modi’s government passed three farm laws to overhaul the agriculture sector that employs around 60% of India’s workforce but is extremely inefficient, in debt, and prone to pricing wars.
India’s farmers are fearful of income loss due to the new reforms, according to the former agriculture secretary.
Angry farmers protested the laws saying that the reforms put their jobs at risk and gave control over crops and prices to private corporations.
As a result, the protest movement became one of India’s biggest and most protracted.
Leaders of six farmer unions who led the movement in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab states said that they were not going to forgive a government that labeled protesting farmers as terrorists and anti-nationals.
Sudhakar Rai, a senior member of a farmers’ union in Uttar Pradesh said, “Farmers were beaten with sticks, rods and detained for demanding legitimate rights … farmers were mowed down by a speeding car belonging to a minister’s family … tell me how can we forget it all?”
He added that at least 170 farmers were killed during anti-farm law protests across India. There is no official data to verify his claims.
A senior BJP member who refused to be named said that the decision to repeal the laws was made by Modi following his consultation with a top farmers’ association affiliated with his party.
The politician, who attended the meeting in which the party agreed to back down, said those present conceded the BJP had failed to communicate the benefits of the new laws with enough clarity.
Leaders of the opposition and some analysts are of the view that Modi’s move was linked to state elections next year in Uttar Pradesh (UP). UP accounts for more parliamentary seats than any other state.
P. Chidambaram, a senior figure in the opposition Congress party took to Twitter and wrote, “What cannot be achieved by democratic protests can be achieved by the fear of impending elections!”
However, farmers like Singh warned that the government could pay a price for its treatment of farmers.
He said, “We are the backbone of the country and Modi has today accepted that his policies were against farmers,” Singh added, “I lost my brother in this mess and no one can bring him back.”
