The fake farmers’ protest that held the capital city of New Delhi hostage for more than a year has finally come to a draw. However, the scars and the damage caused by them will take years, if not months to heal — for the wounds have been far too deep and painful. While repealing the three farm laws was a shock in itself, the government on Thursday (December 9) ceded to several more contentious demands.
#WATCH | Delhi: Farmers celebrate the success of their protest against the 3 farm laws & other related issues at Tikri Border after the suspension of their year-long protest. pic.twitter.com/oFvn0cJxdz
— ANI (@ANI) December 11, 2021
Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Aggrawal wrote a letter to the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) and clarified that governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Haryana have agreed to withdraw cases against farmers with immediate effect.
The letter read, “Cases registered against farmers and supporters in Delhi and Union Territories will also be withdrawn. The central government will appeal to other state governments too to start process to withdraw cases against protestors of the movement,”
To further rub in on the misery of ordinary taxpayers, the government announced that it will provide compensation to kin of family members of protestors who died during the agitation.
Read More: By repealing the farm laws, what is PM Modi actually trying to do?
Repealing three farm laws will hurt poor farmers
As argued previously by TFI, in trying to appease the fake farmers who got their way through a strong protest of anarchy and vandalism, the Modi government has left the flank open for the small farmers to get hurt.
India is an agrarian economy and yet the agriculture sector is running on archaic systems, desperately begging for modernization. The three farm laws were supposed to bring parity to the small farmers who are often razed by the big farmers and Arhatiyas (middlemen between the government and farmers in the food procurement system).
Most of the alleged farmers that camped in Delhi harboured political and religious ambitions. As far as the content of the bill is concerned, not a single legislation was going to hurt the real farmers, although the same cannot be said about Arhatiyas masquerading as farmers.
The supposed farmers were protesting on the presumption that the Minimum Support Price (MSP), which benefitted the farmers of Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh disproportionately, will be removed. And, with the corporate entry in the Agriculture sector, their role in production will be reduced.
Moreover, they were worried about the fact that the government’s subsidies on input and output will be removed. But if one goes by the contents of the three farm bills, none of this presumption holds water.
How rapes and murders have been normalized by these protests
As Reported by TFI, in October, a 35-year old Dalit man named Lakhbir Singh was hung upside down, with a chopped arm at the protest site, while a violent farmer mob cheered the Taliban-esque action vociferously.
To put it bluntly, the actions of fake Taliban-Khalistan farmers had finally metamorphosed into a category that even the devil or other satanic forces will have a hard time competing with.
However, this was not the first time that such barbarity was on display at the farmer’s protest. As reported by TFI, in June, a 42-year-old man named Mukesh from Jhajjar was burnt alive by the fake farmers at the Tikri border.
All through these gruesome killings, a precedent has been set which means that future protestors will be under the assumption that they can get away, even after killing some innocent.
While chilling murders became the modus operandi of fake farmers, women were not spared at the border either. A 25-year old women activist hailing from West Bengal, who had come to participate in farmers’ protest at the Delhi-Haryana Tikri border was reportedly gang-raped on the spot. She reached the protest site in mid-April and since then was subjected to sexual assault on more than one occasion.
Her father filed an FIR, but the young woman succumbed to death on April 30 after contracting coronavirus. The main perpetrators of the crime are alleged to be two AAP leaders who masterminded the entire incident.
Additionally, the Khalistani feelers had infiltrated the camps and were using it for their nefarious agendas. They will now be going back to Punjab assimilated amongst the fake farmers and try to radicalize the locals to join their secessionist movement.
The government believes it has played the long game by repealing the farm laws. However, the cowering down act means that ‘farmer reforms’ will be pushed back by another few decades. And that will feel like someone is vigorously twisting the knife in the back of poor farmers.
