Chetan Rathi has twice voted for Narendra Modi, impressed by the Indian prime minister’s tough stance on national security issues. Now, the 26-year-old is among the tens of thousands of angry farmers who have set up camp on the outskirts of New Delhi in protest at the Modi government and its plans for a sweeping overhaul of India’s agricultural markets. “Modi said ‘save the country from external enemies,’ but now the country is being sold from inside,” said Rathi, who grows wheat, rice and sugar on his 30-acre plot in Uttar Pradesh province.
“It won’t be a market for farmers, it will be a stock market,” he said of the market reforms that farmers fear will leave them vulnerable to corporate exploitation. “The long-term consequences will be disastrous. A few people will command the whole system.” The farmers, who have vowed to continue their occupation of several critical roads into the capital until the laws are repealed, have become the most serious political threat Modi has faced since he came to power in 2014.
With the agitation spreading nationwide, tapping a deep wellspring of rural discontent, the challenge for the government is how to pacify the protesters and defuse the ire that erupted into violence last month. “These [farmers] are dissenters who have numbers, resources and organisational mobility, and are bound by a very strong sense of solidarity that enables them to endure a lot,” said Gilles Verniers, a political scientist at Ashoka University. “Every farmer community everywhere is discussing these farm laws. It is not just a local or regional matter.”