Farmers' Uprising: Lifeline for "India"!?

[Sukla Sen]

A very poetic and, yet, equally penetrating insight.

An excellent opportunity has suddenly opened up - a veritable boon descending from the heaven.
Perhaps, the last chance to save "India" - and Indian people, from the looming disaster.
Must not let it go waste.

<<(I)t’s not merely “crony capitalism” that we are talking about. The three farm laws recently passed hastily in a moribund Parliament are no exception to the trend already set in a way. The government has done it repeatedly but the trend started earlier with blitzkrieg attacks that gave the public no time to react.

It started with the guerrilla attack of demonetisation and then the strategically bad implementation of the GST to weaken petty and small businesses and the states in our federal financial structure.

This was followed by the violent uprooting of the lives and livelihoods of migrant workers with the imposition of a most severe lockdown at four hours’ notice.

There was disquiet, discomfort and distress, but the public response was still not one of outrage. The illusion of the government fighting against black money (forget the promise of Rs 15 lakh in every Indian’s bank account) and valiantly imposing a lockdown against the looming pandemic still had some credibility with the trusting public.

But soon we all could not but see how the pandemic was being used as a cover to hollow out from within the essence of parliamentary democracy. A series of anti-labour and pro-corporate labour laws were passed, virtually without any prior notice or discussion.

Now the government has adopted the calculated move of bringing the three farm laws into effect, fearing little resistance inside or outside Parliament, again under the cover of a pandemic in a demoralised economy with negative growth and crushing unemployment where most are gasping for oxygen.

Briefly, the three laws are meant to dismantle the mandi (wholesale market) system and the minimum support price of agricultural commodities.
...
The farmers rose against it. They rose to defend their rights and this has now become linked with the wider constitutional rights of all Indian citizens. India’s demoralised, impoverished majority has suddenly become aware of the serious danger that stares them in the face. The corporatisation of agriculture is a prelude to the corporatisation of the Indian democracy, of our constitutional rights.
...
The farmers are showing how wrong we all were in our pessimism. Things change, but not always in the way a few plutocrats and their minions want, if ordinary people unite with all their usual frailties and force Opposition political parties to unite at least on this issue. (Otherwise, the Opposition parties want to have neither a clear pro-poor road map of development nor the courage to call the bluff of mechanised corporate agriculture as the El Dorado of the future.)
...
The circumstances have indeed been created by the valiant resistance of the farmers. The lion of the African proverb can still lead an army of sheep to defeat what looked once like an invincible enemy.>>

(Penned by Amit Bhaduri.)

https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/faces-in-mirror-held-up-by-farmers-protest/cid/1800542