Amit Bhaduri: The Farmers’ Protest Exposed the Limitations of Class Analysis
The farmers’ historic struggle and victory has upset not merely political arrogance but conventional wisdom in more than one way. It has shown the limitations of class analysis, and has thrown up new ideas for organizing peaceful protests in a democracy. The fact that relatively better-off farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh often led the movement should teach us the lesson that class position is not always the determining factor. When pushed to the wall, dissent spread across all classes in the entire agricultural sector and inequality within agriculture became less important.
Conditions were created for a movement based on an unprecedented solidarity. We witnessed this as small and marginal farmers, landless agricultural labourers — mostly Dalits — as well as men and women cutting across caste, gender, religion and region joined the movement. That the better-off farmers had greater economic staying power was an advantage. To this was added the nature of agricultural activity. It is different from factory work in so far as men and women could share the daily agricultural work routine. It prepared them for an indefinitely long resistance. In this game of patience, the government blinked first; its high-handed arrogance collapsed with several state elections looming large in the background.
It would be wrong to
say that the farmers were unaware of the class character of the State and its
policies. They took little time to point out that the now-repealed three farm
laws were primarily meant to promote the interests of the two biggest business
houses in the country. The role of the government was that of a facilitator for
their profit from agriculture. This contrasts starkly against the Gandhian
vagueness of ‘Trusteeship’ of national wealth in the hand of big business…
https://janataweekly.org/the-farmers-protest-exposed-the-limitations-of-class-analysis/
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