Dr Nishant A.Irudayadason
Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.

The “Bharat Bandh” which began in November 2020 following the promulgation by the Modi government of a liberal reform of India’s agricultural market, continues to mobilize strongly. According to the Indian Express newspaper of 29 September 2021, there is no indication that farmers could back down on their demands, despite all the efforts made by the BJP to allay their fears about the three contested agricultural laws. These texts opened up the sale of cereal crops, mainly rice and wheat, to free competition to the giants of the agro-food industry. If the protest movement continues today, it is because farmers perceive the threat of losing their land to the private corporates soon after the implementation of this reform.
On 10 October 2021, in the district of Lakhimpur Khiri, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, governed by the BJP legislative assembly, the son of the Union Minister of State is arrested and sent to judicial custody. He and his accomplices are accused of killed 5 farmers by running his car over them and injuring many others including an official of the SKM (Samyukt Kisan Morcha), a movement that coordinates the farmers’ uprising. It is said that this grave incident took place while the farmers were peacefully protesting against the farm bills passed in the Parliament last year and against the labour laws.
After the tremendous success of the country’s general strike (Bharat Bandh) on September 27, the farmers’ uprising had launched a campaign to bring down the ruling party of the present government of Uttar Pradesh, in the upcoming assembly elections by calling on voters to vote for whomever they wanted except for the present ruling party. In addition, they planned to organize another kind of democracy of direct nature in the state by multiplying the Mahapanchayats (which they have already started to paralyze the electoral campaign of the ruling party by preventing the activities of the party leaders and its militant supporters. This is what happened in Lakhimpur Khiri where peasants surrounded the heliport peacefully preventing the helicopter of the traveling Union Minister of State from landing.
Such activities have already been successfully carried out in Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Haryana. In Haryana, the police had already killed a protester a few days ago. But soon after this fatal incident, the protestors made many demands and for the first time since the BJP’s rule, all their demands were met to their satisfaction. This retreat of power in Haryana (a state also led by the BJP) appeared to be an important victory for the farmers. It must be noted that 200,000 peasants and supporters had invaded the city where the murder had taken place and that 25,000 peasants and supporters were permanently encircling, day and night, the seat of state power.
But in Uttar Pradesh, given the importance of the state, the BJP government clearly chose violence, since the Minister of State, father of the alleged murderer, had called for a hard knock on the farmers. After the murder of five farmers, in addition to popular mobilization, as in Haryana after the death of a farmer protester killed by the police, the SKM demands that the minister’s son be tried for murder by an independent judge and that the Union Minister of State be dismissed. Their demands include compensation and jobs for the victims’ family members.
The protest is now taking the turn of a mass movement, with the aggregation of the salaried world to the general social protest against the ruling party in power. Today, what is happening in Uttar Pradesh is changing its dimension since it is the heart of the central power that is being challenged, and could announce a headlong rush of power towards generalized violence since it cannot stop the peasant and popular wave that, little by little, is nibbling away the ruling party’s authority and power everywhere.