By Siddhant Mohan,TwoCircles.net
Earlier this year, farmers from Tamil Nadu, who were facing one of the worst famines in recent years, prostrated themselves at Jantar Mantar, cut their wrists, drank urine and even put dead mice in their mouth, all in the hope that the Prime Minister of India would pay some attention to their unfortunate condition. After nearly three weeks in the capital, they had to leave. The PM never met them, and in many ways the entire episode was a fair indication of how serious the current NDA government is when it comes to addressing farmer issues. In the first week of June, it seems not much has changed, except that this time the protesters are not in Delhi and instead have gathered against state governments in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, both ruled by the BJP. And this time, the government has been unable to shut the protesters out. The result? Five farmers were shot dead by the police in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh on June 6. Kanhaiyalal Patidar, Bablu Patidar and Chain Singh Patidar were killed on spot, while Abhishek Patidar and Satyanarayan succumbed to bullet injuries en route to the hospital in Indore.
But even after these deaths, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan initially denied firing by CRPF personnel which killed the protesters. But Chauhan’s lie was soon exposed when Mandsaur Collector SK Singh admitted that farmers were indeed killed in Police firing.
But in addition to mishandling the case, administrative bodies in both the states (Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra) did not bother to show their responsibility in such times of protest. They put the entire ‘blame’ on the opposition, and tried to create an environment where it seemed that the protests were not the result of farmer grievances but instead the handiwork of the opposition to create unrest in these two states.
Devendra Fadnavis-led government in Maharashtra was quick to put the entire blame over the NCP and Shiv Sena. Similarly, Shivraj Singh Chouhan blamed the Congress for the unrest in the state. While it is of course, true that the opposition in both these states have extended their support to the protesting farmers (which is always expected of political parties in opposition), it is also true that none of the farmers union has any link with these political groups. The farmers which got killed yesterday in Madhya Pradesh belonged to Patidar community whose statewide agitation under Hardik Patel shook the Gujarat, and do not have any links with the Congress. In fact, if we do look deeper into the political links of the farmers unions, it is clear that it is the RSS which has farmers’ unions in both the states which are trying to influence the movement by their own tactics.
It is a fact that the whole movement is running without any leadership, and BJP is constantly trying to break apart the movement with the help of RSS affiliated leaders or organizations. It started with a farmer leader named Jayajirao Suryavanshi, who is known to be associated with the RSS. When core committee from the farmer’s movement was called to meet Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Suryavanshi was one of the members.
After the meeting Suryavanshi announced on his own accord that the movement would be called off. But this did not go down well with the farmers and he was roughed up by the protesters when he returned to Ahmadnagar. Suryavanshi along with his associates was also accused to having dinner at the home of Sadabhau Khote, Maharashtra’s agriculture minister before meeting Fadnavis. Suryavnashi later apologised for calling off the agitation.
But Suryavanshi was not the only one who angered the protesters. The whole core committee which met Fadnavis did not go down well with the protesters. One organisation, Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathan, which was associated with the BJP until the agitations began, severed its ties following the attempts by the party to sabotage the protests.
Its leader Raju Shetty told TwoCircles.net the reason behind the core committee’s failure. He said, “They only talked about loan waiver for marginal farmers, but we have other issues too. And when you talk about marginal farmers, you narrow it down to a few for your ease. But there are many others who need attention. Exclude those who file income tax returns, but others need government’s attention. But core committee did not talk about these things, and called the agitation off like it was dictated by the government.”
Farm loan waiver is one issue, not the only issue
Waiver of farmer loans, which is being projected as the chief regulator of protests, is actually just one of the demands from the farmers. The first and the major demand from the protesting farmers is that State and Central governments should decide a minimum support price (MSP) for the crops and a minimum quota that is to be bought from the farmers on the same MSP.
Just a couple of months back, the country saw a large number of farmers either discarding or selling tomatoes and potatoes at unbelievably low prices. It was not because of the poor output or too much loan over the farmers, but because of bumper production that it could not be managed into cold storages or somewhere else.
The shortage of pulses also drove the current farmer’s agitation. Government said that it would raise the MSP of pulses to Rs 5,000 from Rs 4,500 per quintal to promote the production of pulses. This was seen as a positive and pulse production gone up. But government as well as states failed to keep their promises and farmers had to sell their produce on the new and record low price of Rs 3,000 per quintal. It clearly implies that farmers not only faced adverse conditions in bad seasons or during episodes of crop failures, but also during the times when there is good production and government fails to keep up to their promises.
For his decision of withdrawing support from government, Shetty said, “There was a rally in Mumbai and I gone there to take part in the same because it reflected the idea which I stood for. But the protesters told me that they would not let me take part because I was from the government side. So I took this decision to move out of my support for the government.”
Almost the same kind of conspiracy took place in Madhya Pradesh when a union affiliated with the RSS struck a deal with the state government and postponed the agitation on their own.
RSS attempts to create rift exposed by farmers
In Madhya Pradesh, movement took spark on June 1 under the leadership of Rashtriya Kisan Majdoor Sangh, Aam Kisan Union, Bhartiya Kisan Sangh and few other smaller farmer groups. Out of these leading organization, Bhartiya Kisan Sangh or BKS, is affiliated with RSS. On June 5, Shivkant Dixit from BKS announced that the agitation will be postponed and said that the government – which is ‘pro-farmer’- has accepted most of their demands.
This move by BKS was strongly condemned by Rahstriya Kisan Majdoor Sangha, Aam Kisan Union and other groups, as a result of which they dissociated themselves from the BKS and continued protesting for their demands.
Shiv Kumar Sharma, president of the Rashtriya Kisan Majdoor Sangh, openly announced that their agitation would continue until their two main demands – remunerative prices for produces and loan waiver – were met. The unions other than BKS were also angry because the government met only BKS representatives, not others. “The BKS has no moral right to call off the movement”, he added.
The setup between RSS and governments in both the states also reflects the inability of the state governments in dealing with the farmer problems. On June 6, CRPF personnel opened their fire on protesting farmers, where BKS was not present. Those who got killed, as already mentioned, belonged to Patidar community and had strong difference with the BKS. So the whole firing incident in Mandsaur left the farmers with the idea that if they are not part of the system, they deserve to get killed.
Beyond the anger over the prices, there is also the stark reality of how many farmers have committed suicide in Madhya Pradesh. While the farmer suicides in Maharashtra have been well covered and documented, the situation is no different in Madhya Pradesh. According to the latest data from National Crime Records Bureau tells, at least three farmers have committed suicide every day in Madhya Pradesh. Between 2001 to 2015, there were more than 18,000 suicides by farmers in Madhya Pradesh.
The farmers of the Madhya Pradesh have their own experience of fear and conspiracy when it comes to police firing. Congress, which has extended its support to the protesting farmers, has done same in the past.
When Digvijay Singh was serving as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Police opened fire on protesting farmers on January 12, 1998 in Multai town of Betul district. Farmers were protesting to demand compensation for crops damaged in rain and hailstorm, when around 100 policemen surrounded them and stopped only after they had killed 17 farmers. Dr. Sunilam of Kisan Sangharsh Morcha was convicted for life against cases 277, 278 and 280 in the Multai firing incident. At that time too, Chief Minister Digvijay Singh ordered probe – like Shivraj Singh Chouhan did this time – and transferred officers but did not resolve the problems of the farmers.
The whole farmers movement, which Yogendra Yadav implies as ‘amazing’, has already seen the death of seven people. It is a matter of urgency for BJP to resolve the issue with full democratic intellect (which is yet to be seen) at earliest otherwise these two states, which share their neighborhood with Gujarat, may cost BJP the elections in Gujarat in the coming months.