Punjab: Protest success doesn’t translate, farmers find little echo in campaign

“Tin sau assi din (380 days)” is mentioned far less frequently — the time protesting farmers camped out in the open on Delhi’s borders, the time it took to make the mighty Narendra Modi Government backtrack on farm laws it had pushed through, amid a pandemic, without consultation.

And yet, only months after the historic success, and with voting three days away, candidates of the farmers’ movement have almost no visible momentum in the campaign — leaving the field more or less clear for the AAP to woo the vote for change.

The Balbir Singh Rajewal-led Sanyukta Samaj Morcha (SSM), comprising 22 of the 32 farm unions of the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) that led the agitation, is struggling to convert the wide support it got into votes.

In Chandigarh, Prof Manjit Singh, chief SSM spokesperson, tells a story of a movement that was late in taking the electoral plunge due to circumstances beyond its control, one that has allegedly been thwarted at every step by more powerful forces.

There were three groups in the 32 unions of the original mobilisation: Those who had never fought an election and didn’t want to do so now (led by the Joginder Singh Ugrahan group); those who had participated in the electoral process (unions and kisan wings of left parties) and had no problem in doing so now; and those that hadn’t fought an election earlier, but wanted to join the contest this time (led by Rajewal). The conversation about registering a political party had begun much earlier, but “at that time, Rajewal did not want to weaken the movement’s bargaining power vis a vis the Centre by moving towards it”, says Prof Singh.

Even after 22 unions did take the plunge, precious time was lost, he says — in the eventually fruitless seat-sharing negotiations with Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, and then by the EC taking its time to process their application for registration. In the end, the farmers did not get a party, nor a common symbol — 58 of their 92 candidates are fighting on the symbol of the cot, while the rest make do with an assortment.

“This is a churning… we are aware of the odds, but we had to fight for the third space, for the large section of the disenchanted in Punjab”, says Prof Singh. Campaigning in Nandgarh in Patiala district, candidate Prem Singh Bhangu, leader of the All India Kisan Federation, one of the more prominent names in the SSM, says: “We had asked for the tractor, or tractor trolley, or trolley. Had we got the tractor as symbol, we would have a wave”.

That’s more than a little wishful thinking. Travel in the state and it seems evident that the SSM is held back by more than just the malevolence of others or the lack of a common symbol. The cleavages and faultlines that the farmers’ movement had temporarily straddled, relegated and blurred are re-emerging  — not just within the farm unions, but outside them as well.

At its peak, the movement drew support from the Punjab city as well as village. In a predominantly rural state, where crop prices and farmers’ incomes affect every sector of the economy — new motorcycles and cars are launched on the harvest festival of Baisakhi, marriage dates are set according to the timetable of wheat and rice procurement, and that is also when the markets boom — the Hindu trader in the city contributed generously to the movement led by the Jat Sikh farmer from the village.

Now, however, especially in the urban areas, the agriculture crisis that propelled opposition to the farm laws, a crisis that still continues unabated, finds scarcely a mention in poll talk among people or candidates.

Campaigning in his constituency in Bathinda, Congress’s Manpreet Badal, finance minister in the outgoing government, says he doesn’t include the farmers’ issue — because “mine is an urban seat and my pitch is nationalistic”. IAS officer-turned-politician, Jagmohan Singh Raju, who is the BJP candidate against the Congress’s Navjot Singh Sidhu and SAD’s Bikram Singh Majithia in the high-profile constituency of Amritsar East, does not speak of the farmers’ movement or the farm crisis either. “People talk of drugs and infrastructure. In the last 10 days, not a single person has asked me about it”, he says.

It is almost as if, between the end of movement and the coming of election, farmers have lost the power to set the agenda, and to make others speak of and for them.

While the movement was ongoing, despite their often conflicting interests, big and small farmers and landless agricultural labourers had rallied together behind the protests at Singhu and Tikri. Now, agricultural labourers in Dalit mohallas ask increasingly louder questions about the movement’s gains.

In Rajewal’s constituency in Samrala, in the SC cluster of village Chehlan, young Kamalpreet Singh articulates a commonly heard grievance: “At that time, they said ‘kisan mazdoor ekta zindabad’. I believed it. But then I saw that for the mazdoor, nothing has changed.” In the Ravidassi mohalla of Balad Kalan village, district Sangrur, Arshdeep Kaur says: “It is good to fight for your rights. The farmers did it, but what did we get? We work the whole day in the fields, but while everyone’s salary increases, our wages remain the same.” The old cynicisms and disbeliefs are rushing back in. “After all, our village has four gurdwaras. One for Jats, two for SCs, one for other backward castes”, says Kamalpreet.

If the SC mohalla is beginning to express its alienation from the farmers’ movement and cause, even among the landowners not many are betting on the success of the SSM.

In many places, farmers do not hide the fact that they do not even know the names of SSM candidates. In Rajewal’s constituency, grizzled Ujagar Singh, a 69-year-old zamindar who camped at Singhu for nearly two months, says: “My own vote is for Rajewal, but I can see that people have gone back to older factions in my village. The contest, here, is between the SAD and AAP. The SSM could come in third”, he says.

The frittering away of the “eka (unity)” by a movement that did not take farmers’ “sahmati (consent)” before entering electoral politics may well become the post-script to this election — it is also a strong reproach to a mobilisation that prided itself on taking power to the people. “They used to keep politicians off the stage, garoor karde si (took pride in it)”, says Amarinder in Sangrur’s Phaguwala village.

But it may also be that the movement’s great success has paved the way for its fall in a state that has a healthy scepticism about power, and a clear sense of its ability to corrupt absolutely. Especially after a people’s movement that made a government bend, Punjab’s farmer is not prepared to lose sight of the vital distinction between government and pressure group, between siyasat (politics), jathebandi (mobilisation) and sangharsh (struggle).

“Earlier we would not ask questions, now we do”, says Gurdeep Singh in Bhucho Khurd village in district Bathinda. Gurmail Singh in Dhaula village in Bhadaur has one: “If we vote for the kisan morcha, who will listen to us, ladange kidde naal (who will we fight against)?”