The Farmers’ Anxiety has Won World Sympathy

Kautilya, writing in the second century BC said, if the king imposes on people undue burdens, he would  “make the people angry and spoil the very sources of revenue” (Arthashastra 5.2.70). Modji will do well to listen to this indigenous wisdom. There is no “foreign plot” here. If the farmers are distressed, it is the nation that is going to suffer. If food producers are called parasites, it hurts. If the Prime Minister calls anna-datas “Andolan Jeevis”, it clearly exposes his insensitivity. A response is natural. Only leaders who suffer from a deep sense of insecurity can look at the protesters like Greta Thunberg, Rihanna or Susan Saradon a threatening ‘gang.’ Meanwhile flatterers can flourish. 

The farmers’ anxiety is not an “internal matter” any more than the Holocaust, the Capitol Hill attack, or the Myanmar coup. World opinion carries weight. Movements like the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, issues like migrants drowning in the sea, or the Uttarkhand tragedy are human concerns. Indian farmers’ worry has become a world concern, and the way they are treated a national embarrassment. Our leaders are responsible. No one else is “defaming” India, they are doing it themselves. The so called “conspiracy” is their creation. A ‘siege mentality’ is puerile.

Let us look at the issue more closely. Lakhs of farmers have committed suicide during the last few years. They have been victims of the manipulation of the market, apart from crop failure and inability to return loans. They have gone through the experience of artificially created price rise (like the present petrol and onion prices) and manipulated price fall for their products. If they are protesting, it is because they know the deviant ways of our trading class and the indifference and insensitivity of the present set of rulers. Already194 farmers have died during these protests, 115 have been arrested, and 21 protesters missing since Republic Day. No expression of sympathy from those at the helm.

Mohammad bin Tughlak Comes Back to Life

S.S. Radhwana, a 88-year old Airforce veteran, wrote to the President and the Prime Minister asking whether Winston Churchill was right when he said that the Indians could not rule themselves. Churchill was sure that India would break up after the British left. Possibly, he foresaw forces like the RSS divisive ideology and ‘Hindutva polarization strategies’. Radhwana wonders whether Modiji has brought Mohammad bin Tughlak back to life again with his fanciful projects. What project of this new avatar has succeeded? Demonetisation was only the beginning of the trouble, but it crippled the economy. Kashmir and Ayodhya anger accentuated the agony. NRC, CAA and farm laws bring the Moditva Master-projects to a pathetic conclusion. Even two Shakaracharyas condemned the hasty decisions of Modi over demonetisation and farms laws. 

History has often exposed certain leaders’ inflated self-projection. Radhawana pleads that the barricades against farmers (cement barriers, trenches, barricades, barbed wire, spike, and nails) be preserved for future historians: monuments to the “insensitivity of an elected government”. India’s Nazi stories will stun future generations. Arthashastra warns, “Wealth will slip away from the childish man who constantly consults stars” (Arthashastra 9.4.26). Promoters of obscurantist ideologies are sure to stumble.

Neoliberalism, A Billionaire Friendly Budget 

An additional trouble with the present order is that, apart from their Saffron convictions, they believe in wealth creation through catering to “corporate greed”. They have sold themselves outright to the ultimate principles of Neoliberalism. Today, we admit, everyone is affected. Concepts developed in the theory have seeped into our daily language, says George Monbiot (Out of the Wreckage, Verso, London, 2018, Pg. 29). They define life as  stiff competition, and classify people as winners and losers. They hold that even grave inequality is inevitable, that working towards economic equality is counter-productive (Monbiot 30). 

This ideology is reflected in the last budget that has severely reduced assistance to weaker communities:  e.g., incentive to girls’ Secondary Education, Samagra Siksha Abiyan school education and especially to higher education. This closes doors to the weaker communities. No lamentations, no tears!

Friedrich Hayek: the Opulent Must Have a Free Hand, They Create Wealth

Let us study a little more carefully how far Friedrich Hayek, the most vocal proposer of this theory, takes society. He marginalizes claims of human equality, universal rights, and redistribution of wealth. His belief is that the freedom of the wealthy must be absolute. Their creativity alone ensures wealth creation. Even democratic rights may need to be curtailed (Ibid 32). There is always something wrong with losers in the economic competition; they may even be deviant and morally unsound. In any case, they are parasites! (Ibid 35). A welfare state promotes dependency and passivity.  So goes the Neoliberal doctrine. Economists like Milton Friedman did not differ significantly from this view of things.

In such a world, what the big bosses want, the market wants (Ibid 36). There are consequences: trade unions bypassed, wages lowered, no regulation against the poisoning of rivers, endangering of workers (think of the 168 workers who are trapped at Chamoli, Uttarkhand). Privatisation should be taken up in a big way: of energy, water, trains, health, education, roads, prisons (Ibid 37), airports.  Monbiot says, oligarchs in Russia and India, have already pocketed enormous state assets in this way (Ibid 38). The prescribed formula seems to be, “Business takes the profits, the State keeps the risk” (Ibid 38). So, the State deregulates corporations and re-regulates citizens (Ibid 40). 

Once such an atmosphere is created, politics become irrelevant to people. Debate is the empty talk of elites. Arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols, sensation (as it is happening in India). Monbiot presents Trump as the model of present-day amoral politics (Ibid 39). People like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were skilled in presenting the theory in acceptable language. Even Clinton and Tony Blair, when they took over, continued the very strategies of their opponents (Ibid 47). Obama did the same.  He bailed out the banks during the 2008 economic crisis and abandoned the victims (Ibid 48). 

“Monstrosities are Normalised” (Monbiot 70)

The result has been that government has lost its image, in the US as elsewhere: it is considered incompetent, corrupt, insensitive, and indifferent to the anxieties of the citizens. Trust in the media too has fallen (Ibid 55). And wherever there is no effective Opposition, even “monstrosities are normalised”, taken for granted, accepted as normal and inevitable (Ibid 70). The public renounces responsibility. That is exactly what is happening in India.  

People have the feeling that governments take the funds that belong to the citizens and use them against the citizens themselves, limiting their rights and silencing their voice. Election-funders take back money from the public worth several times their contribution in the form of arbitrary prices or favours from the government. The natural resources of the nation are too easily passed on to election funding corporates. The corporates bribe the government, the government bribes the corporates. This mutual dependence is going to be the greatest scandal of our age. Solutions can come only if citizens have a greater say in the budgeting process (Ibid 127). What we have today is not democracy, but plutocracy: there is no redistribution, no care of people (Ibid 133).

From Plutocracy to Autocracy

Such grotesque doctrines become “normal” when an alternative voice is not strong or convincing enough (Ibid 7). The situation gets worse when people become mere cheering crowds before autocrats, who claim more powers than those of kings when society believed in the “divine right of kings” (Ibid 4). Ordinary citizens are helpless before the government/plutocracy-controlled media (Ibid 19). When the Judiciary and the University collude, the final fate of a society is signed. The media which act as propaganda organs for the government alone qualify for tax exemption. Companies that keep bribing the ruling class prosper. Their experts formulate laws for the government, and farmers and small traders are robbed systematically.  Monbiot calls this a “Pollution Paradox”, the disgraceful puzzle why the “dirtiest companies” thrive… banks and gambling companies in equal measure (Ibid 134).

In today’s unethical atmosphere, even gross scandals have lost their ‘shocking quality’ (Ibid 135). It is taken for granted that only the unprincipled can be successful in the political field. One of the terms used to refer to today’s politicians is “Warlords” (Ibid 138), for whom those who challenge “this cesspool of corruption are not just unpatriotic, but anti-democratic” (Ibid135).

The Indian Scene

What Monbiot describes seems to represent the Indian situation to an unbelievable extent. Demagoguery and scapegoating have replaced reasoned argument. What is fostered is hatred: against minorities, Dalits, critics, social activists, Muslim immigrants. When unemployment rouses anger, leaders shift the blame; anger is diverted against other nations. A new Ladakh tension is created in the coldest season, a new battle front is opened against Pakistan, freedoms are limited, special powers are assumed. When it combines with Covid, the Autocrat’s power becomes absolute: the parliament can be marginalized, discussions skipped, farm laws  rushed through, CAA protests suppressed; the Chinese being 8 kilometres in the Indian territory can be made into a minor issue, India sliding to the 53rd position for democratic values can be considered a “foreign plot”.  

For Modiji Greta Thunberg’s tiny tweet had a greater “destabilizing” power than 50,000 PLA men on the Ladakh frontier, about whom he has been generally silent.  He has put unusual energy in self-defence against the international concern for the Indian farmers, describing world opinion as “Foreign Destructive Ideology” (FDI). This “siege mentality” is demeaning the Indian nation. This is part of the “conspiracy” for “defaming” India at the leadership level. 

Contradictions Galore

The Prime Minister’s Dhekiajuli (Assam) election speech before tea garden workers was a pitiable show. Bemoaning the Chinese remark that Assam tea was of Yunnan origin is infantile. Those who know history cannot deny the fact that it is a cross-breed between the Chinese and Indian variants by the British tea planters. And Modiji championing the indigenous nature of Assam tea before workers whose pay is far below minimum wage and who are asking for a pay raise sounds insensitive and shockingly irrelevant. Promising them Rs. 3,000/- as election bribe is like asking them to sell the fate of the nation for a cup of tea. It is cruel mockery. Twenty times that amount is already due to them. The rumour is that their working hours are going to be lengthened after the elections are over and their living facilities reduced. Their condition will be worse than that of the farmers.

Democratic choices are bought and sold today, says Monbiot. Gone are days of Swach Bharat. The BJP ruled states are the untidiest! Beti Bachao slogan has no convincing power after embarrassing Dalit humiliations in the UP. The Balakot sensation tilted the votes slightly in favour of the Ruling Party which brought them victory, but they were not given mandate to hurt Kashmir sentiments, or to waste public money on things like MLA and MP purchases, election bribes or Ayodhya lavishness, that took the Indian economy down by 14% and 7.8%. Arthashastra says, “A King with depleted Treasury eats into the very vitality of the citizens and the country” (Arthashastra 2.1.16). Take care!

Yes! Contradictions abound: while Karnataka passes the anti-cowslaughter law imposing puritanic habits, liquor begins to flow into states and districts where the elections are due. It is as dreadful to think of it as EVM tuning. While Palanisamy waives farm loans in Tamilnadu, UP limits labour rights, taking advantage of the Covid situation. In Haldia, the PM shouts ‘Jai Shri Ram’ as a political war cry in view elections; before the farmers he brings secular arguments. While quoting Mahatma Gandhi in diverse contexts, he forgets the Mahatma’s support for farmers at Champaran against British Indigo planters. 

As for Raj Nath Singh, while withdrawing the Indian army from advance positions, announces a budget of  $130 on military modernization. Nirmal Sitharaman, while cutting the budget for assisting students from weaker communities, announces provision for opening 740 Ekalavya residential schools in tribal areas to saffronize  tribal communities.  As tribal lands are already under threat, their culture will be wiped out and they will be reduced to the helpless state of Dalits, as it happened down the centuries. The tribals are asked to internalize this message, “To succeed, we must destroy ourselves” (Monbiot 120). Let us say nothing about the indignity of Aya Ram—Gaya Ram strategy for politicians with a criminal record.

There is Hope Yet

And yet, you will surely want to ask why the present regime finds support in the face of these and thousands of other contradictions. Please ask the Americans, the country that claims to be the most advanced in the world, how 70 million people voted for a person whose mental condition is a world anxiety. Think of the irrationality of the Capitol Hill attack. The tragedy about today’s politics is that it is not Reason that unites voters but Vested Interests. ‘Namaste Trump’ and ‘Howdy Modi’ were about power and money, not values and welfare. There was a brief moment when people wondered whether Trump would declare a state of Emergency in America and take over as the Commander-in-Chief of the army, a Myanmar coup in advance.

Can it happen in India? America escaped that peril narrowly. If a change of air was possible in hesitant America, it should be possible in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, and Rabindra Nath Tagore. Never lose hope. “Despair is the state we fall into when our imagination fails” (Monbiot 6).