The Farmer’s Challenge

Context: The farmer’s agitation needs to transform itself into a movement, aspire to transcend prejudices and bring out the sublime among the followers.

Issues associated with prolonged farmer’s agitation

• Becoming violent and breeding crimes: Lynching and murder of Lakhbir Singh at Singhu border.
• Intransigence of rulers: No solution insight despite months of agitation.
• Trap of being maligned, waylaid or sabotaged: Question on how long can movements stick to its core agenda and fundamentals.
  • Romanticism of spontaneity and voluntarism cannot be sustained for long.
• Leaderless: Farmers’ agitation does have a coordination committee or leader.
• Weak in planning and coordination: When an agitation extends into weeks and months, it also requires the building of a cadre that will be ideologically and organisationally trained to retain a degree of influence over the followers.
• Disconnect with ongoing socio-political processes: Farmers’ agitation did attempt this by encouraging Jat-Muslim unity in parts of UP.
  • But beyond that, it has remained singularly focused on three farm laws and matters related to MSP.

Conclusion: Movements like farmers’ agitation must strive to be a microcosm of the larger society but also strive not to replicate social prejudices. To mobilise the masses but also to make them overcome the mass mentality is the most delicate task. Only time will tell if the farmers’ agitation is up to it.