Even though a small portion of the
farming community appeared to be unhappy with the three farm laws, their
agitation was labelled as a national farmers’ protest by media, both
domestic and international. This has misled several influencers and
policymakers in multiple countries into believing that the agitation
taking place on the Delhi border is pan-Indian in scope.
New Delhi: Farmers are a community highly valued in
India for their service and dedication to the national interest. The
agitation launched in the final months of 2020 with the declared
intention of making Prime Minister Narendra D. Modi scrap the three farm
laws passed late last year involved only volunteers from a particular
state before a trickle of support came in subsequent weeks from a few
other states (including Tamil Nadu, where the Congress-aligned DMK is
strong). Despite the fact that only a small portion of the farming
community in the country appeared to be unhappy with the three farm laws
passed last year, their agitation was labelled as a national “farmers’
protest” by media, both domestic as well as international. This has
misled several influencers and policymakers in multiple countries into
believing that the agitation taking place on the Delhi border is
pan-Indian in scope. This mischaracterisation has remained uncorrected
abroad, so far as the media is concerned. The other characteristic is
that it is not only just food grain cultivators of a single state and a
smaller number from a few other states who are active in fuelling the
protests. A prominent role is getting played by the “aartiyas”, the
trader-moneylenders who stand to lose once they lose the monopoly over
produce that has been enjoyed by them till now. Another problem that
vexes them is the need to register themselves under the Income-Tax and
GST laws even where their grain business is concerned. Till now, the
income stream of the “aartiyas” from handling farm produce went almost
entirely unrecorded. Given the extreme nature of the punishments
prescribed under these laws, combined with the manner in which laws and
accompanying regulations have been used by corrupt officials to collect
bribes, it is not surprising that the “aartiyas” are resisting coming
under the tax scanner. However, a modern economy mandates that
transactions get recorded fully and accurately, and it is to be hoped
that the Ministry of Finance will, in the next round of tax proposals,
give up the obstinate stand that the income-tax rates first introduced
under the Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda in 1997 (and which were a
substantial reduction from earlier rates) be retained. Instead, they
have seen incremental increases over the years rather than brought down
further. Rate reductions need to happen at least for those with incomes
below Rs 1 crore annually.
UNWARY SNARED IN GEOPOLITICAL GAME
Greta Thunberg perhaps unwittingly revealed a few details of what had
been obvious to a few observers of the situation at least from November
2020. This was that no concession short of full and immediate
withdrawal of the farm three laws is acceptable to those who appear to
be functioning behind the cover of a noble and patriotic community. Many
of those taking part in the protests are patriotic citizens, who
genuinely believe that their futures are being threatened by the new
laws. Unfortunately, it takes a single drop of ink to make inedible a
glass of milk, and the nature of the mindset behind just such a drop was
revealed by Ms Thunberg before those who briefed her the first time
around got her to delete her earlier tweet and replace it with an
anodyne substitute. Meena Harris or Rihanna too may be unaware of the
mayhem that was caused in the national capital of the world’s most
populous democracy on 26 January, when an army of tractors entered and
forced their entry, including into zones close to where diplomats from
across the world reside. It may be remembered that several tens of
thousands of farmers died not by accident (as was the case in the 26
January incident) but by committing suicide. These occurred during the
decade when AICC supremo Sonia Gandhi remote-controlled the Central
government. Finally, after all these years of silence at suicides and
privation at the hands of middlemen in league with politicians, the
death of a farmer so touched the heart of the admittedly charismatic and
telegenic daughter of the “CP” (Congress President) that she rushed to
his home village in UP to console the bereaved family.
THE MIDDLEMAN FACTOR
The bigger the aartiya, the greater his motivation to ensure freedom
from the tax net through mandatory registration under the Income-Tax or
GST provisions as prescribed by the farm laws. Several of the bigger
aartiyas are involved not only in grain procurement but in distribution
of FMCG fertiliser, farm machinery and equipment, building materials,
cement, hardware and in real estate. So far, none of the suppliers of
such business have interceded with their aartiya distributors to ask
them to concentrate on business rather than mobilise groups of
protestors to go to the Delhi border or involve themselves with the
protest in multiple other ways. Several of the farmers are in debt to
the aartiyas and it needs to be checked if the interest rates being
charged are beyond the legal limit. For those who are outside the
comforts of the Lutyens Zone, it is inexplicable why thus far no
discernible effort has been made by the government to identify and
persuade the aartiyas to focus on business rather than street protests.
This seems not to have been attempted by either the government or
multiple entities that are giving them other business. Since 1947,
farmers in a few of the northern states have been under the yoke of the
aartiya system, and have fallen into debt through various ways. Once
those aartiyas behind the turmoil understand that not only the economy
of the entire country but their own incomes will be affected by it,
enough of them will come around to the view that getting involved in
protests at the cost of business is unwise. Under the new laws, farmers
will have the right to sell their produce through multiple platforms,
including APMC. They can also use digital platforms, E-NAM or physical
aggregation of supply chains, as pointed out by agricultural experts
concerned about the future of farmers in India, a country where the
producer and the consumer often get short-changed by the middleman, who
till now seems to have escaped the attention of the revenue authorities.
EFFORTS ONGOING TO DERAIL INDIA’S FUTURE
Several among those taking part in the protests are Sikhs, a noble
and patriotic community. Religious figures and other influencers (such
as Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, an acknowledged expert
on the military) need to be briefed on the efforts of aliens to derail
the future of the youth of India through generating tumult. Not just
Sikhs but North India’s Jat community are intensely patriotic, and those
within the Jat community who are genuine community leaders should be
contacted and given the facts, so that the context becomes clear.
Diplomacy needs to be carried out not only in conference rooms or
through the mass media but individually as well. Sarpanches of villages
active in the protest as well as panchayat BDOs are others who need to
be individually contacted in order to get the facts across rather than
leave them to the messages suggested in manuals such as the toolkit
disclosed by the Swedish activist. Laws ensuring continuance of Minimum
Support Price and APMC need to be introduced, while legislation
removing such features of the laws already passed as absence of judicial
involvement or freedom to hoard without limit needs to be initiated.
The present move of having a hiatus for 18 months while an expert
committee goes through the clauses is another example of the manner in
which the football of reform is constantly being kicked outside the
field. Another tweak to the farm laws should be to place responsibility
for their implementation on state governments rather than impose an
omnibus “one size fits all” Central edict. Should such changes be made,
it is difficult to see why the farmers’ agitation on the Delhi border
should continue, at least in the case of the overwhelming majority. Only
the few external actors and their agents would be upset at the protest
cooling down, as they seek to use the cover of the farmers to create a
situation designed to lead to a meltdown in the credibility and
therefore the efficacy of the Central government as an instrument of
reform. It needs to be emphasised that while the number of those who
have been involved in the “Melt India” operation are very few, several
of them were given OCI cards and visas by the present government, as a
Gandhian gesture of reconciliation. The bitter fruits of the policy
error of the NDA scrapping the earlier Khalistan blacklist have started
pouring down in some locations. The need is to bring an “all hands on
deck” approach by reaching out to the state governments and opposition
parties involved. An innovative idea suggested by concerned agricultural
experts is to set up an independent Agricultural Tribunal that would
look into matters relating to exploitation of farmers from any quarter,
including predatory corporates. The few (almost entirely external)
rotten apples need to have their OCI cards and visas revoked
immediately. Care should be taken to avoid giving such documents to
those with a history of support for secession in India who live in
countries such as Canada, the US and the UK. Their activities end up
pleasing the GHQ Rawalpindi-PLA partnership at the expense of the people
of India. They are particularly active in seeking to poison ties
between India and other major democracies. To give a religious tag to
the present protest is erroneous, as this only helps the Melt India
operators. Whether the citizen of the world’s most populous democracy be
Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian or Hindu, the believers on each of
these faiths are committed to the integrity and progress of India and
have demonstrated their loyalty to the tricolour numerous times.
MELT-INDIA OBJECTIVE
The Lutyens Zone had been warned in advance about the Melt India
plan, facets of which were most recently revealed in the detailed
toolkit fortuitously revealed by Greta Thunberg. The campaigner for a
clean planet seems to have acted in good faith without being aware of
the provenance of the information that was fed to her. The same can be
said of Meena Harris, Rihanna or many others who joined in the Twitter
war. After the failure of the 26 January ruckus to get the government to
repeal the laws, the global Twitter storm was, it was hoped, force the
hand of Prime Minister Modi into withdrawing the three farm laws. Once
this got done, next would follow agitations on other pretexts, such as
the removal of Article 370, and this particular movement was planned to
gather pace by mid-May. Rather than the passive-reactive policy favoured
in the Lutyens Zone, what is needed is to identify the handful of
individuals who are hiding behind the farmers and carrying out their
“Melt India” operations. In this task, the innocent farmers and others
who have temporarily been led into being part of actions that in effect
go against their own interests need to be treated as friends and not as
adversaries. We are all Indians together, and in case an all-out effort
is made by the authorities to make clear, especially to local
influencers, the dimensions of what is taking place, even Rakesh Tikait
may come to favour a reasonable solution. A few foreign nationals have
been allowed to freely enter India since 2015 despite working in sync
with GHQ Rawalpindi-PLA and their game plan of weakening the country
from inside preparatory to invading it from the outside. The sooner the
present situation is rectified through reasoned dialogue, behind the
scenes diplomacy and intercession, as well as substantive gestures of
accommodation, the better. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will in
time understand the importance of India, the US and other major
democracies that form the G-10 working together in furtherance of the
common security of the group. G-10 leaders need to avoid gladdening the
hearts of those no longer secret capitals that seek to replace secular
and liberal democracy with extremism and authoritarianism as the
dominant ideology of the times.
