Farmer organisations united in objective, divided in path

A hallmark of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) agitation of 2020-21 was the self-declaration that it would be peaceful and non-violent, and largely it was. The SKM provided an umbrella to about 40 farmer and labour organisations across the country. It is just as well considering that over 85 per cent farmers have small and medium landholdings and about 55 per cent of the nation’s labour force is engaged in farming and allied activities. 

Another key principle of the SKM leadership was to keep the protest independent of politicians and individuals with political ambitions, maintaining a grassroots character. However, this stance led to internal challenges when some SKM leaders decided to contest the Punjab Assembly elections in 2022. This decision led to the formation of splinter groups such as the SKM (non-political) led by Jagmit Singh Dallewal.

One of the SKM leaders, Balbir Singh Rajewal formed Samyukta Samaj Morcha and contested the Punjab polls as an Independent candidate. When lost, he returned to the SKM fold. This was not acceptable to Dallewal, who heads the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta Sidhupur} and is now spearheading the renewed agitation by Punjab farmers.

As it happened, all the farmer leaders who had contested state elections lost miserably.

Opposing the SKM’s move to take back those who had contested Punjab polls, Dallewal formed SKM (non-political) and was joined by Sarwan Singh Pandher of Amritsar. Together, they declared the revival of farmer agitation over the same unmet demands. Their focus remained on guaranteed minimum support price for farm commodities, loan waivers and compensation for various agriculture issues.

Pandher, who heads the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti (KMSC), was in the eye of a storm during the 2020-2021 agitation after he was charged with leading farmers into the national capital on the Republic Day prior to the allocated time.

In their current agitation, Dallewal and Pandher are backed by Shiv Kumar Sharma 'Kakkaji', head of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Mahasangh which is said to be an RSS-affiliate. Locally, Dallewal and Pandher have been making headlines with sit-ins and garnering support.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, they have been motivating Punjab farmers to launch a fresh agitation for guaranteed MSP and other demands, without keeping the SKM leaders in the loop, or so the SKM leaders claim.

Dallewal took the stance that if SKM wanted, it could join the protest, giving rise to the perception that farmers were divided in this battle. SKM has been supporting the agitation from outside and has also declared its own programmes as they feel that the objective is common, and at this juncture farmers must not appear disarrayed.

The government has engaged in four rounds of talks with SKM (non-political) at Chandigarh to halt tractor-riding farmers at the borders of Punjab and Haryana. Haryana government’s tough measures against the agitating farmers have intensified the standoff. After the death of a young farmer at Khinaur border in Punjab, the agitation has been given a pause.

Notably, farmers’ foray as Independent candidates into electoral politics has largely been unsuccessful. Bhartiya Kisan Union’s (BKU) Rakesh Tikait may have served the farmers of his region assiduously for over 35 years, but when he had contested from Amroha in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he lost to an unknown BJP candidate. His father, Mahendra Singh Tikait, however, never contested election nor ever campaigned.

The history of farmer organisations, dating back to the post-Green Revolution era, reflects a persistent struggle against the low minimum support price, high electricity tariff, lack of irrigation network, and high cost and non-availability of fertilisers. Many of these organisations were formed in the 1960s and 1970s after the Green Revolution took roots and agricultural production increased along with input costs.

The BKU, formed in 1978, has an all-India presence. It started to protest the allocation of a village grazing land in Kanjawal in Delhi to the Scheduled Caste community, highlighting the issue of land rights and ownership. Farmers protested that their grazing land was being taken away and organised themselves into forming the BKU.

Leading the country-wide agitation was Narayan Swami Naidu of Tamil Nadu, who was also the president of BKU. "Not much thought was given to naming it a 'union'. But later the name became so popular that there was no point in changing it," recalls BKU secretary-general Yudhvir Singh. Now the BKU has several breakaway groups all over the country.

Every state in that sense has strong farmer leaders who set up organisations that highlighted the issues of local farmers and farming. Late professor N.D. Nanjundaswamy founded the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) that mobilised farmers around issues like land reforms, fair prices for agricultural produce and sustainable agriculture.

Late Sharad Joshi founded the Shetkari Sangathan in Maharashtra initially to seek better prices for onion farmers. But later, when he started supporting the free market, the organisation lost a lot of members. Likewise, several groups are functioning in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Rajasthan, etc.

There is a long history of farmers paying with their lives to get their demands met, be it in Nipani in Karnataka, Nasik and Vidarbha in Maharashtra or Multai and Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh. The SKM agitation of 2020-2021 was the largest and longest but without achieving the desired results. The SKM (non-political) is faced with a standoff with the Union government ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. On the other hand, farmer leaders like Vijay Jaivandia of Vidarbha have a point when they say that the SKM should have stuck to its demand for guaranteed MSP during the 2020-2021 protest. Everything else would have fallen in place.

(Author is a senior journalist based in New Delhi)