Aryaman Jain, Irina Cheema - Farmers’ Movement in India: A Moment for Collective Introspection / Gallery: One Year of Kisan Andolan
With the Narendra Modi government, the American empire finally has at India’s helm, a reliable handyman unperturbed by factors such as the sufferings of common people. What previous governments since 1991 had failed to deliver... Modi has delivered with decisiveness. Since 2014, the government has dutifully gone about following the diktats of a fraudulent ranking system created by the World Bank to facilitate ‘ease-of-doing-business’ at the expense of India’s ecological security, indigenous communities and farmers. Protections for the environment, for workers and farmers have been peeled away layer by layer.
In India, the federal structure under the Constitution lays down
agricultural policy as a matter to be legislated by the states. Recognising
this to be the case, the Central government has been bringing ‘Model Acts’ on
agriculture and ‘cajoling’ states to adopt these, knowing well that direct
intervention would earn it the unpleasant ire of India’s vast farming
population. However, the limited response seems to have worn thin the patience
of this government’s masters. With the pandemic, India was locked down. The
government sniffed an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands….
Farmers’ Movement in India: A Moment for Collective Introspection
For centuries, agriculture has been a way of life. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Indian agriculture underwent a large-scale fundamental shift. Under British colonial policy, cultivators across the subcontinent were systematically brought into the fold of centralised markets and, with “imperial preference”, they were effectively made to produce a supply of industrial raw materials and commodities for British consumption at the expense of local requirements. The new policies decimated not just the diverse variety of resilient agricultural practices, but also the artisanal manufacturing systems that were symbiotically linked with them. This extraction, facilitated through imperially centralised markets, is among the things that powered the British Industrial Revolution.
https://aryamanjain.home.blog/2021/02/13/the-farmers-movement-in-india/
Gallery: One Year of Kisan Andolan
As we mark one year since
agitating farmers announced an indefinite protest across India, protesting the
contentious farm laws, our team at the Centre for
New Economics Studies (CNES) have put together a small gallery, reflecting
on the movement; the issues of 'trust' in the farmer-state relationship; role
of women & the old in one of the longest civil resistance movements since
India's independence, while documenting the voices of those at the protest
site.
Explained: Farm Protests Reflect India's Worst Failing: A Broken Farmer-State Contract
Issues of the 4Ps ('Price, Product, Position, Profitability and Protection')
Photo Essay: 'The Farmers Standing Their Ground During Delhi's Brutish Winter'
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Bharat
Bhushan - 'Entire political science' lesson: Peoples' power trumps people in
power
Surinder
S. Jodhka: Changing Modes of Agriculture in Punjab
Jairus
Banaji on the Indian corporate strategy of subordinating farm households and
family labor
Indian Farmers' Protest - Work in progress
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