Reviewing Farmers' Movement of Madhya Pradesh
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Though the Narendra Modi-led BJP government and its bootlicking mouthpieces love to stamp all type of anti-government protests as “anti-national”, the massive anti-BJP farmers’ movement that gained extreme momentum since five protesters were killed in police firing and one in police custody in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh, has become such a movement that the BJP or its parent organisation RSS couldn't stamp “anti-national” due to the immense political weight that the farmer vote bank, which is 54.6% of all Indian households, carries with itself.
Despite few BJP leaders and lawmakers trying to magnify the “conspiracy” angle behind the farmers’ movement, behind which they saw a “filthy Congress hand”, the entire saffron camp suffered a strong setback as a strong movement in a BJP-ruled state with 90% Dalit and backward caste Hindu participants rocked the very foundations of its rule — divisiveness and mass-distraction from socio-economic problems.
While the farmers’ agitation, which started initially from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, where the semi-pauperised and semi-starving farmers stripped, ate mice, drank their own urine and did all sort of unprecedented protests to draw the attention of the Modi government towards their utmost miserable condition, failed to win any major victory for the participants immediately, it created the base on which the next struggles of the farmers, especially the poor and the landless peasantry would be built up in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, two BJP ruled states.
A vigorous and bigger struggle unfurled in Maharashtra, where the farmers rallied against the BJP government demanding a better price for their crops and a loan waiver to save many farmers who are reeling under the juggernaut of heavy debts due to repeated crop failure and heavy losses incurred due to plummeting prices of crops in the market.
The flames of the farmer struggle in Maharashtra reached Madhya Pradesh on 1 June, when the farmers of the state started rallying against the apathy of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government towards farmers and demanded higher Minimum Support Price (MSP) for their crops.
The government of Chouhan was not in a mood to pay more MSP for crops to the poverty-stricken farmers, who are left with no other choices but to commit suicide to escape the vicious cycle of debts, so the BJP government took the easy way out, i.e. unleashing brutal police repression on the agitating farmers, which killed six so far and injured numerous farmers in the state.
However, the state-sponsored violence by the Hindutva camp and its lackey police force and bureaucracy didn’t deter the farmers. Despite losing their compatriots to bullets and police torture during the height of their just struggle for higher MSP for crops and loan waiver, the farmers kept fighting relentlessly and organised themselves with vitality to force the Modi government and its running dogs to a humiliating retreat.
The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh and other states failed miserably to halt the farmers’ movements and through different deception-filled moves, they tried unsuccessfully to derail the strong and militant farmers’ movement in the heartland of India.
Even the time-tested communal riot-inciting techniques of the Hindutva camp led by the RSS failed drastically to polarise the farmers on religious line by kindling flames of cow-violence in BJP ruled Rajasthan and by introducing a new venom-spitting Hindutva icon, Sadhvi Saraswati to rake up the cow slaughter issue, dear to the BJP, to split the farmers’ movement.
The miserable condition of farmers in Madhya Pradesh
The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, which won several awards from the central government for remarkable performance in agriculture at a time when 42% of the state's agricultural land is not irrigated, 54.6 % farmers are landless farmers and more than 83% of the state’s rural population earns less than ₹5000 per month, did absolutely nothing to help the farmers get a minimum amount of profit after selling their crops.
While the contribution of agriculture to the national GDP dropped from 70% in 1947 to 14% in 2016, but in Madhya Pradesh, the contribution of agriculture to the GDP of the state rose from 25% in 2004-05 to 30% in 2014-15. In Madhya Pradesh, the agriculture sector has grown during the same period at 9.7% while on the national scale, the rate was only 3.7%. Though the BJP marketed this growth as a spectacular success of its pro-farmer policies, in reality, it was the farmers of the state who suffered the most on this growth trajectory.
According to a report in Times of India’s 10 June 2016 edition, the cost of cultivating wheat in Madhya Pradesh increased to ₹2695.27 per hectare in 2014-15 from ₹1241.34 in 2004-05. Similarly, thanks to the submission of the subsequent governments to the neo-liberal economic policies, the cost of seeds used in one hectare increased from ₹998 in 2004-05 to ₹2653 in 2014-15. The cost of irrigation in Madhya Pradesh, where 72% of the agriculture is rain-fed, increased from ₹1961.50 per hectare in 2004-05 to ₹2599.55 in 2014-15.
While the cost of farming is increasing manifold, the farmers are constantly forced to sell-off their crops at a throwaway price, even less than the amount they invest in farming. The crop prices fell drastically in the last two years and the Madhya Pradesh government remained indifferent towards the farmers and didn't care to increase the MSP of crops, which again forced the farmers to sell their crops to the market where the usurers and traders paid higher price than the government's MSP, however, much lesser than the cost incurred in farming the crops. The bottom line is, the farmers remained quagmire in deep crisis.
U-Turn on promises by the Modi government
Narendra Modi promised to implement the Swaminathan Commission report during the 2014 general election campaign and the Hindutva camp, represented by the BJP, also promised MSP of 1.5 times the production cost of the crops to win votes of the farmers.
However, in these three years, despite taking countless measures to protect the lives of corporate houses and cows, the Hindutva camp and its government under the leadership of Narendra Modi did exactly nothing to increase the MSP of the crops to support the lifeline of the country- the farmers. Madhya Pradesh government only followed the footsteps of Narendra Modi’s government and allowed everything from ISI agent breeding in BJP IT Cell to Cow Vigilante (Gau Rakshak) attacks on Muslim men and women, but any reform to help the farmers.
The Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, is shamelessly fooling the farmers since the last two years by promising to double the income of the farmers in five years. But studies have shown that the farmers, on an average earn between ₹1600 to ₹2200 a month and the government’s promise of doubling their income in five years, i.e. by 2021 (when inflation will also increase the prices of essential commodities by at least 20-25%) to a meagre sum of ₹3200 to ₹4400 every month per household, will not bring any massive change in the lives of the farmers.
The semi-pauperised farmers of Madhya Pradesh, especially the small and marginal farmers, who are more than 80% of the rural households and the landless peasants, who account for 54.6% of the state's rural population, are forced to face the brunt of the worsening situation. They were further pushed towards the verge of economic bankruptcy when the demonetisation exercise started in November, during the sowing season.
Demonetisation: Another fatal blow that knocked farmers down
The demonetisation exercise by Narendra Modi's government to appease the US government's Catalyst organisation, also drove the farmers towards utmost destitution, as the traders were devoid of cash and paid the farmers in cheques, which they couldn't encash either due to unavailability of bank accounts or cheque bounce caused by lack of fund or spelling errors.
As per the farmers of Madhya Pradesh, the average waiting time for a cheque to get encashed is 20 days, during which the cash-starved farmers are forced to seek loans from feudal landlords and unscrupulous moneylenders to meet their immediate expenditures and even to pay the debts that they took to sow seeds and during farming.
Many farmers had to take immense loans to meet huge cash requirements during the wedding season that started in November-December and many farmers were forced to sell their livestock to arrange cash for their daily sustenance. Sowing failed in many areas as the farmers lacked money or digital currency to pay for the seeds and fertilisers, which threw the poor and the landless peasants to further destitution.
The deadly debt trap killing farmers
The loans that the farmers take from private moneylenders and feudal landlords at interest rates that hover between 20-24% per year, often becomes the noose around their necks that strangulate them and drive their families towards utmost destitution. The farmers, who take loans to meet immediate expenses like investment in farming, purchase of equipment for farming, wedding or other social rituals, are forced by the moneylenders to hand over their land, cattle, house, etc. in return for such deadly loans and it becomes an impossible thing for the farmers to survive amid such situation.
An NSSO survey shows that 46% of Madhya Pradesh farmers are reeling under heavy bank debts, which can result in them being booted out of their lands and houses by the banks or the local feudal landlord cum moneylenders, who are drooling like hungry sharks to occupy the little assets of the poor farmers.
The low prices of crops, the higher input costs, high amount of piling unpaid debts and no source of alternative revenue has forced thousands of farmers, 1982 between February 2016 to February 2017, to commit suicide. However, under the Modi government's notorious policy, the suicide of farmers aren't attributed to huge debts and their exploitation at the hands of the feudal moneylenders and banks, but the agriculture minister would blame the personal issues of the farmers like failed love affairs and impotence for their suicide.
Modi government’s corporate appeasement and farmer killing agenda
During the last three years of the Modi government, foreign capital owned corporate houses, big comprador capitalists like Ambanis, Adanis, Tatas to Vijay Mallya enjoyed a lot of fringe benefits including huge tax sops, income tax breaks on corporate income and moreover, the immunity from any compulsion to repay debts owed to public sector banks.
The big defaulters like Vijay Mallya, who has taken huge amount of loans from public sector banks, using guarantee given by the government, escaped the claws of the law very easily and is now “living life king-size” in London, while the government is only uttering jargon over the issue of recovering corporate bad debts.
While the Modi government has done everything it could to protect the interests of the big comprador capitalists and corporate houses owned by foreign monopoly and finance capital, it remained utmost indifferent towards the plight of the farmers, who are forced deeper into the quagmire of poverty and destitution every hour.
The neo-liberal economic model, which the right-wing parties like the BJP and the Congress cherish very deeply, doesn’t only make the lives of the working class miserable but also brings havoc economic wrath on the livelihood of the peasantry.
The indebted farmers are chased to death by the public and the private banks and feudal moneylenders. The governments at state level orders some sort of loan waivers to hoodwink the poor farmers, like what Yogi Adityanath did recently to woo the farmers; however, the lack of a comprehensive support system and the exclusion of loans taken from private moneylenders from such loan-waiving schemes often turns such measures into a farce for the farmers, who are not helped by these schemes but are, rather, harassed more by an anti-people and pro-feudal bureaucracy that implements these decisions at the ground level.
The farmers’ movement and the future course of politics
This farmer rebellion, which started from Maharashtra and became a viral and a strong movement in Madhya Pradesh will not die down easily, though a large section of the rich farmers is in the leadership of the agitation. The movement is spreading slowly to the BJP-ruled states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, etc. and more farmers are now demanding unconditional loan waiver from the governments of their respective states, along with better prices for their crops.
The corporate mainstream media will try to downplay the militant movement waged across all these states by independent farmers’ groups with full vigour and vitality and will try to distract the mass attention using cricket matches between India and Pakistan. But despite such censoring of their movement, the farmers will not relent unless they get justice and prepare a system through which they can safeguard their economic interests and save themselves from exploitation by the feudal landlords, local usurers, traders and unscrupulous moneylenders.
Due to its class and caste composition the BJP and its parent body RSS will throw their weight behind the feudal landlords, local usurers, traders and moneylenders and ensure that the feudal mode of exchange prevails in the country and land reforms are not done to prevent the collapse of the socio-economic and political supremacy of the Brahminical feudal system over which the Hindutva politics is standing.
Therefore, it’s a task of the progressive and democratic forces to unite and lead the farmers against the Hindutva fascist regime and win the support of the poor and landless peasants by raising the demand for a total and revolutionary land reform agenda that can be successfully implemented only by overthrowing the socio-economic and political dominance of the feudal landlords in the countryside of India, where Hindutva fascism is bred every moment by these parasite classes.
Only a broad anti-feudal struggle by the farmers with their spearheads directed at the Hindutva fascist system, can spell doom for the present regime and its corporate appeasement drive, which has caused severe socio-economic problems for the common people of the country, especially the poor workers and peasants, the downtrodden masses, the minority communities, the Dalits and the Tribals.
The need of the hour is to unite the fragmented and spontaneous movements of the farmers under the anti-fascist banner and to forge a close unity between the agitating farmers and the working class’ struggle against the government’s policies. The iron strong unity of the working class and the peasantry will surely become a lethal weapon against the communal-toxic Hindutva brigade led by the Modi regime and its ideological mentor, the RSS and end their fascist rule over India.
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