Farmers in India are gearing up for a nationwide protest on Friday, March 28. Farmers, under the banner of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) or United Farmers Front, will gather in front of all district headquarters across India to demand an end to the repression against their movements along with several other demands.
The farmers claim their peaceful protests are a legitimate expression of their collective grievances against the state’s harmful agricultural policies. They have alleged that the state is trying to suppress their voices of dissent at the behest of their corporate bosses and international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
Farmers’ ongoing struggle against the government’s anti-farmer policies
The protesters will also push for the fulfilment of other long-term demands of the farmers movement in India, including:
- The repeal of the pro-corporate National Policy Framework on Agriculture Marketing (NPFAM)
- The enactment of a law to ensure a minimum support price (MSP) based on the C2+50% formula (total cost + 50% profit)
- Greater state procurement for all crops
NPFAM, the farmers group claims, is pushed by the IMF and World Bank as yet another attempt to enact the essence of the three agricultural laws the Modi government was forced to repeal in 2020-21 after a year-long agitation in Delhi.
Farmers are also demanding the end of the government’s efforts to introduce corporate interests into agriculture, as well as measures to protect farmers from indebtedness and suicide, including a comprehensive loan waiver for both farmers and agricultural workers.
In a press release on March 23, SKM expressed the farmer movement’s opposition to the government arresting dozens of their leaders in the north Indian state of Punjab and uprooting their protest sites.
On March 19, security forces arrested several leaders of the SKM (non-political) and Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM) in Punjab and destroyed their protest venue erected on the Punjab-Haryana borders in February 2024. According to the SKM, the Punjab police arrested over 350 farmers including Jagjit Singh Dallewal who was on an indefinite hunger strike in support of the demand for a legal MSP.
SKM (non-political) and KMM are breakaway groups from the SKM which was first formed in 2020 to fight against three pro-corporate laws introduced by the Modi-led government.
SKM also claimed that the Punjab police also arrested hundreds of other farmers who were participating in a week-long sit-in in Chandigarh.
Repression will intensify the farmer’s movement
SKM warned the state government in Punjab and central government in Delhi that their attempts to suppress the voices of the farmers would only create greater resistance. The increased popular participation would be the end of all oppressive governments in the country, it declared.
India’s central government led by the ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has unleashed a massive crackdown in the past to prevent the farmers from carrying out their protests.
The BJP-led central government has filed numerous cases against the leaders of the 2020-21 protests at Delhi borders. Despite its agreement to withdraw those cases, the Narendra Modi-led government has refused to do so, making it one of the central demands of all the farm agitations since then.
SKM claimed that “the firm message of such a series of police repression is that” the government, “is forcefully violating farmers’ right to protest against the corporate policies that have brought havoc in their life and livelihood” and protecting the interests of big capital instead of standing with the farmers.
SKM appealed to other factions including SKM (non-political) and KMM to form a greater unity to protect the common rights of all farmers, and to protest against the repeated breaches of their rights by the governments at various levels.
“Without protecting the right to protest and push back the authoritarian, neo fascist tendencies being exhibited by those in power in our times, farmers cannot win their genuine long pending demands to protect their life and livelihood,” SKM said.
Mobilizations continue across states
Meanwhile, farmers in other states continue to mobilize in large numbers against the anti-farmer policies of their respective state governments, as well as the central government.
Last week, a large march was organized by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and other organizations in Shimla in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh. A large three-day sit-in led by the AIKS and other farmers’ groups concluded in Patna in India’s eastern state of Bihar on Wednesday.
Apart from pressing for the central demands of a legal MSP and the withdrawal of NPFAM, these protests also pushed their specific state governments to protect land rights for farmers.
