Farmer protest are continuing for more than six months and country is witnessing the evolution of farm movement. Started from small hinterlands of Punjab, the protest has become a national issue with farmers laying siege to the capital city of Delhi. Government has tried all kautilyan techniques like Saam Daam Danda Bheda but it has gone in vain. Farmers have created a colony and ecosystem of their own. Without getting into the merits of the argument, I am listing the different phases through which protest has gone.
1. Ignore stage: Government after authoritatively passing the bills in parliament, ignored the protestors.
2. Laugh and Ridicule stage: The troll army of bhakts laughed and meme about protest. They were rejected as terrorist, khalistanis
3. Attack stage: Protestors were charged with Lathis and gassed with tear bombs.
Generally at this stage, either the protest is broken or government succumb to democratic pressure and reach some middle ground. But this was not the case with farmer protest. It saw a different trajectory.
Now the sympathy shifted to the farmer. and They became rigid with their demands and refused to budge down. As a result, we see another cycle.
1. Rigid negotiations: This was kind of a delay tactic deployed by the negotiators. Farmers were smart to generate media stories like taking their own food to negotiation room, using their own conveyance, giving measured media bytes, shooing away Godi media and identifying fringe elements in the protest, creating their own support system to bear the vagaries of weather, launching own news channel and news papers, bringing family members to the site, putting a rotational system of protest representative from each house, poems/social media management, fund collection from masses, collecting roti, mitti and water from each house to build participation and unity among protestors. Government tried its best to break the protest by attempts to soak up funds/social media capital, test patience of other side and tiring the opposition. In the meantime, symbolic gestures like heavy security, digging of road, barbing the area, isolating the protest site, finding smaller farmer groups which support government views were tried. However, the negotiations did not make any headway.
2. Rhetorical backfire: The rigidity was naturally leading to frustration among farmers. Both sides were blaming each other. To keep the people motivated, leaders used rhetorical speeches. This resulted in episodes like 26 January Red fort siege and flag hoisting. This turned the sentiments against the farmers.
3. Tears of momentum: One of the outcome of protest was emergence of farm leader Rakesh Tikait. His style of giving smart media bytes in local language which targets the dual audience, understanding of constitutional vision and speaking in legal limits, style of protest management like giving due space to media, weeding out fringe element, keeping violence away from the protest site, and promoting other protest members while becoming the face of protest site was a treat to watch. His vision of the duration of the protest, protective instinct for his supporters and ability to catch the nerves of the masses helped in sustaining the momentum of the protest despite public ire. Red fort siege had turned the emotional tide against farmers but a teary eyed call to his farmer fraternity infused new blood in the protests.
As a consequence, a protest which was frittering away and was on the verge of dying a natural death regained momentum. Now there does not seem to be any straightforward resolution of the situation and given the intransigence on both side, possible resolution could only be a middle ground of give and take and wait and watch. A following 5 point solution could be useful in this context.
1. Farmer courts for quick resolution of farmer-trader disputes
2. Parity between Mandi based trading and contract farming based trading
3. The law implementation may be delayed by 18 months in Punjab and it could be immediately made operational in rest of the country. In the meantime, create some success stories which could be showcased to Punjab and West up farmers
4. Bring more crops under MSP system and simultaneously begin effort in regularization of trade in agriculture. For MSP, a join committee could be set up which can fix minimum price and quality parameters. Technology should be used to map the land ownership, and produce and any farmer who is falling under MSP, should pay appropriate income tax.
5. FCI could be privatized or limited to guaranteed procurement only for essential commodities.
However, all of this is easier said than done. Farm issues are systemic in nature and related to the overall economic system of the country. Hence a short as well as a long term view and vision is required to resolve the deadlock between two sides.
