Protesting farmers’ unions have announced a ‘chakka jam’ across the country on Saturday, in a step which they think will heighten pressure on the Modi government to repeal the three revolutionary farm reforms. Already, even before the purported chakka jam is held, the ‘farmers’ are receiving a cold shoulder from across the country – especially states like Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. The ongoing farmers’ agitation is largely concentrated in the Northern states of India. The rest of the country, frankly, is enjoying witnessing first hand how a bunch of entitled ‘farmers’ and middlemen make a clown out of themselves.
Farmers from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand – both BJP ruled states have made it clear that they will not be part of any chakka jam, which the farmers unions have planned in order to block multiple state and national highways across the country. As such, having been squarely told that they will see no participation from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, the farmers’ unions are now running helter skelter to somehow save themselves the embarrassment. And who do you think is firefighting on behalf of the unions? None other that teary-eyed Rakesh Tikait.
Rakesh Tikait has issued multiple excuses to somehow convince the media, and the Indian public that the farmers from the two Northern states are not participating in the chakka jam for legitimate reasons. First, Tikait said that the unions had ‘intel’ that chakka jam in Uttarakhand and UP could see violence being spread. “We have evidence that few people would have attempted to spread violence at these places. So, we have decided to not block roads in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand,” Tikait said on Friday. Talk about alienating your own people!
However, that is simply not where Tikait stopped. The ‘farm leader’ went on to say that farmers from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand will not be participating in the chakka jam because they can be called to Delhi any time, owing to their proximity to the national capital. As such, Tikait said that farmers from these two states had been kept on ‘standby’. And then, Tikait, in his third excuse, went on to say that sugar-cane farmers have decided not to participate in the movement – opting to issue a memorandum to the state government detailing their demands instead.
While these three excuses have been made simply to cover the Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s nosediving popularity among even the protesting farmers, there are some other reasons too which have forced Rakesh Tikait to not push for the farmers from Uttarakhand and UP to participate in the chakka jam. As for the Yogi administration, Tikait has already been shown a trailer of how things could turn hell-like for him if the agitations were to turn violent, or get out of hand in UP. Yogi Adityanath is a no-nonsense man, and any untoward incident taking place in his state as part of the chakka jam will result in Tikait being thrown into jail and the agitations in western UP being winded up.
In Uttarakhand, meanwhile, the state police are continuously breathing down the throats of anarchists who have a tendency to effectuate violence under the garb of the farmers’ protests. Uttarakhand Police has ‘identified’ at least 300 people from the hill state who were part of a mob that stormed the Red Fort and clashed with security personnel on January 26, reported the New Indian Express. As such, the antics of ‘farmers’ are not being tolerated in Uttarakhand as well, which is why Rakesh Tikait perhaps thought it fit to keep them out of the chakka jam.
The national capital region in any case has been turned into a fortress, and the farmers’ unions cannot even think of trying their stunts in and around Delhi. Effectively, the chakka jam of ‘farmers’ is all in all, a big failure.
