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Farmers struggle starts dictating political discourse from Nandigram

 

Farmers struggle starts dictating political discourse from Nandigram

Ground Zero

Jagtar Singh

 

Strong reaction to the introduction of the three laws is one first major issue in which the assessment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi miserably failed.

Once this struggle got triggered in Punjab, Modi government could never make out that this battle for survival would assume such momentous dimension. This struggle is now expanding every day involving farmers from almost every state from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

And now it has started dictating political discourse and that too in the space that has been vacant in the absence of a political outfit at the national level with the Congress continuing to be on the downslide and the Left having been marginalised even in West Bengal.

The intervention by this struggle to protect the very idea of inclusive India has started from Nandigram in West Bengal, the most prestigious seat in the elections in this state. It is in Bengal that the battle on the very idea of a liberal India is being fought.

The farmer leaders have started campaigning against the BJP with a call to the people to defeat this party that propagates politics of divisiveness and is anti-farmer. The farmers struggle, as expected, has started getting transformed into a platform to mobilise the forces that believe in the idea of inclusive and liberal India.

It is pertinent to mention here that Bengal has been closely linked to Punjab as these two regions had spearheaded the freedom struggle and freedom fighters from these two regions joined hands from time to time beginning with the Ghadr Party that was the first to give call for complete freedom in 1913.

These are the two regions that have produced the maximum freedom fighters. One has to visit Cellular Jail Museum, Port Blair in Andaman.

West Bengal and Punjab were linked again during the Naxalite struggle that was sparked in the fields of West Bengal and found fertile grounds in Punjab. The Leftists have been vacating the democratic space ever since the fall of the Marxist government that was ousted by the TMC. It is now the TMC headed by street fighter Mamta Banerjee who is the Chief Minister who is defending her bastion.

It is direct fight between Mamta Banerjee and Narendra Modi. In case BJP wins this battle, Punjab would be the last hurdle for the BJP to cross to implement its Hindutva agenda.

It is in this context that the intervention by the farmers struggle in this crucial battle is significant. This is the battle that is going to dictate the political discourse of India that is already turning from liberal to autocratic democracy.



The farmers have compromised with the fact that this is going to be a long-drawn fight. It is the first such struggle in the country in which the protesters have started replacing tented accommodation with pucca structures and installed coolers  and air conditioners. Three townships have come up at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur at the doors of the national capital.

The BJP could not realise that the people who are rooted in the soil don’t get fatigued so early. They are the people who have been conditioned by the nature to fight.

The design to divert the struggle stands frustrated. Of course, this section continues to target farmer leaders thereby. Such criticism only goes in favour of the government. Pointing out weaknesses is different from abusing the leaders.

This is the struggle that is going to decide as to which development model the country has to follow. Ironically, both the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress have been in consensus till now so far as the development model is concerned. The Congress is supporting the farmers struggle perhaps not due to conviction but only due to being in opposition. These laws are rooted in the very policies that are the legacy of the earlier UPA government.

The Leftists have distanced from the farmer leaders campaigning in West Bengal. The problem with the CPM is that it has reduced itself just to a regional party. Many of the farmer leaders are rooted in Marxist thought but are not part of any organised party. This struggle has provided opportunity to the Leftists too to shed parochial thinking and work towards revival.

It is the intervention in West Bengal that is crucial and timely. No struggle for survival ever is non-political, it can be non-party.  

 

 

 

 


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