Amandeep Sandhu - “We have stormed the citadels of Badal”: The Rail Roko Agitation Disrupting Punjab

By Dilip -
The loudspeakers in the vicinity were alternating between anti-government slogans and revolutionary songs. These songs described the pain of the loss of the cotton crop or white gold, the manner in which loans were recovered, the 97 farmer suicides that have taken place in Punjab between May and August this year and the proliferation of drug use in the region.  Speaker after speaker took the stage, exhorting the protesters to remember the stories of Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha and Udham Singh from the freedom movement, as they drew parallels between their struggle against British imperialism and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failed Land Bill. Amidst the warnings against corporate imperialism, they also relayed instances of Sikh saints and warriors such as Guru Gobind Singh and Banda Bahadur, who fought against injustice. They asked the protestors to fight through non-violence this time, strive for peaceful agitation, and to not do anything that would give the government and police a chance to clamp down upon the agitation 

 On 10 October 2015, the fourth day of the rail roko—stop the trains—at Pathrala village, near Dabwali Mandi, in Punjab, the organisers of the joint farmer-labour protest mistook me for a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Agent. Given the extreme vigil with which the organisers have guarded the agitation, not allowing it to be appropriated by any political party, even rejecting regular party leaders from taking the stage, such suspicion towards me was completely in keeping with the aim and method of the agitation which hopes to benefit more than 2 lakh families in the state. 

The protest, which has farmers squatting on railway tracks to prevent trains from plying began on the afternoon of 7 October. Their demand is for just compensation for the failed cotton crops, remunerative rates for basmati crops, the payments of sugarcane dues owed by private mills, and debt relief. To this end, the protestors had urged for a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, tentatively scheduled for yesterday at 5 pm. However, the talks that were held ended in a stalemate with neither side budging.

Dressed in a shirt and cargo pants, notebook in hand, I looked very urban to the thousands of rural men, women, elderly and children who were lying on rail tracks under white tents amidst the joint flag of eight Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) factions and seven different Mazdoor organisations. The small and medium land owners among the Jats, the Dalits and other lower castes are fighting this battle together, Lachhman Sewewala, the state secretary for the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union told me: “It is wrong to consider farming as only a Jat occupation. A farmer is not a caste. To me, a farmer is one who derives their living from farming, with land or without land.” he said. He went on to point out that small farmers and landless labourers deal with much the same issues as any other farmers, that include employment, price rise, sustainable agriculture, loans and recovery and suicides. “The expenses on agriculture have increased, the profits have decreased. The labour’s sustenance from land and their relationship with it has reduced. We no longer get fodder for cattle, straws for cooking fires, even vegetables and so on.” 

He went on to state that the farmer and the labour suffered under these obstacles, and that is why they had all come together. People have come from all across the state irrespective of the political party in power in their area: Shergad and Rampura in Bathinda district are represented in the parliament by Union minister for Food Processing, Harsimrat Kaur Badal from the Shiromani Akali Dal; the Sangrur district is represented by Bhagwant Mann from the Aam Aadmi Party. Amritsar is represented by Amarinder Singh of the Congress.

The loudspeakers in the vicinity were alternating between anti-government slogans and revolutionary songs. These songs described the pain of the loss of the cotton crop or white gold, the manner in which loans were recovered, the 97 farmer suicides that have taken place in Punjab between May and August this year and the proliferation of drug use in the region.  Speaker after speaker took the stage, exhorting the protesters to remember the stories of Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha and Udham Singh from the freedom movement, as they drew parallels between their struggle against British imperialism and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failed Land Bill. Amidst the warnings against corporate imperialism, they also relayed instances of Sikh saints and warriors such as Guru Gobind Singh and Banda Bahadur, who fought against injustice. They asked the protestors to fight through non-violence this time, strive for peaceful agitation, and to not do anything that would give the government and police a chance to clamp down upon the agitation.

It was only as I arrived that I realised that by taking the bus to the venue I had avoided the police barriers that had been erected to prevent people from reaching the site. I had called one of the organisers ten minutes prior to reaching and had been asked to alight near a statue, at an old and now unused bus stop. As I stepped down from the bus, I saw 22-year-old Gurpreet Singh, who had been sent to fetch me on his motorbike. As we made our way to the location, I noticed the police standing a distance away. Once I reached, I realised that several protestors had come to the venue by navigating through paths in the field and other roundabout routes. 

A day before this demonstration, the police had arrested protestors who were coming from the nearby villages of Khudian and Faridkot Kotli to Pathrala. These protestors were released after a few hours, a technique that is being used across all other seven sites of the protest. The loss from the stoppage of over 850 trains, their subsequent cancellation and diversion to other routes has cost the railways upwards of Rs 100 crore until now, and is also affecting the sale of hosiery and iron good among others as their stocks are piling up. The last sustained rail roko in Punjab was in 2000 and had lasted 72 hours. This one that is underway right now has long since crossed that, having already exceeded seven days. “Will the Railways impose the loss on the Punjab government?” Gurpeet asked me as we drove, “They will pay everybody else, but not us.”... Read more: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/stormed-citadels-badal-rail-roko-punjab

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the ...
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227...
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, ...
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
Read more

James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence

By Dilip -
Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the varieties of moral experience." In the course of that work, I have been struck by the frequency with which I received the same answer when I asked prisoners, or mental patients, why they assaulted or even killed someone. Time after time, they would reply "because he disrespected me" or "he disrespected my visitor [or wife, mother, sister, girl-friend, daughter, etc.]." In fact, they used that phrase so often that they abbreviated it into the slang phrase, "He dis'ed me." Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary. But even when they did n...
Read more