The country has witnessed massive protests led by farmers mainly from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. They have begun their march to Delhi in a bid to protest a whole lot of government-led legislation that they believe will be to their detriment.
The visuals of the protests and the actions of the state governments in response to them have reverberated across the country and made for compelling viewing. However, rather than respond to the protest with a listening ear, the government has either used force in trying to set up physical obstacles to the protesting farmers march to Delhi, or more importantly, tried to discredit or delegitimize the protests by claiming that they are motivated by political designs or that they are being misled or even claiming that they are militants.
And to achieve the aims of trying to set the narrative the ruling party unleashed their social media warriors, reached out to journalists and editors and party lackeys in a bid to send out the message that they know what’s best for the farmer and “the farmer who cannot think for himself should know better”.
This comes at a time when the government has been accused of trying to encourage corporate monopolies similar to what is prevalent in the west. In Western nations, especially in western Europe and North America a few large corporations own monopolies over what farmers produce, be it meat, chicken or farm produce leaving the farmer with no option but to sell to them despite there being a pretence of an open market where the farmer can sell what he produces to the highest bidder at the price he determines.
While India’s system is more ‘democratized’, these are the first steps towards a monopoly where the large corporates will initially offer the farmers a higher price, but once they have established a dominant market position, they will abuse the monopoly and decide at what price they want to buy from the farmer. There have already been examples of this that are currently ongoing in the e-commerce space as well as the mobile telephony space where large companies offer huge discounts so that the smaller companies cannot compete leaving the large companies laughing all the way to the bank.
Why will the farming sector be any different? And with the government demonstrating that it is willing to bend over backward to help certain corporates the farmers have every right to be suspicious and the government, rather than trying to discredit them or unleash water cannons, tear gas and online trolls upon them should engage with the agitating leaders and win them over. After all, this is what democracy is all about, and not only trying to win over people to vote for you.
