report on farmers protest against loadsheding
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march: The birth of a new rural chapter
The Indian farmer is up in arms. A tidal wave of farmers' protests is sweeping across India, threatening to wash away the fragile foundations on which Indian society and its economy have been built up in modern times. In state after state, a new breed of farmer has hit the streets in violent and non-violent agitation, demanding recognition from his complacent urban fellow citizen and a government which seems to act only when somebody pulls its tail. In the process, the age-old urban-rural divide has been given a new twist.
These agitations are not the protests of the deprived and relentlessly exploited landless labourers or Harijans which simmer ominously beneath the apparent stillness of the countryside. Nor are they the futile ideological battles of extremists who once sought to light the spark of agrarian revolt. Nor, again, is it the localised, caste-based rural resurgence which former prime minister Charan Singh sought in his brief halcyon days. The revolt in the countryside today is of a different kind, rooted in the process of modernization, led by the new capitalist farmer, revolving on questions of incomes, prices and inputs which in some parts of the country are beginning to loosen agriculture from its traditional feudal moorings.