Remembering the Farmers’ Protest, a Triumph of Satyagraha Politics
The Wire, Jan 9, 2022

These farmers, they know how to have fun during a pandemic

The year was 2021. A really boring year. Nothing much was happening, except for lazy lockdowns and quiet quarantines. We followed stay at home protocols and shut ourselves away from all social and anti-social activities. A lot of people I know were going in and out of insanity. (Oddly, the personalities of a few people I knew actually improved with madness.) I was going a bit stir crazy myself, looking for things to do and places to go.

But one day, when I was reading a newspaper (an unusual activity for me), I discovered the most popular pandemic destination. It was Delhi. The national capital had become a great go-to place during lockdowns. Apparently things had kicked off when a whole bunch of farmers from Punjab and Utter Pradesh had begun a Delhi-dash party. And the idea had caught on like field-fire. Farmers from various villages packed suitcases, prepared picnic baskets, readied bangra music tracks, started their trusty tractors, and off they went on their big, bold Delhi adventure.

At first I thought this whole Delhi tripping thing was because farmers were fed up with their agriculture culture, and wanted to breathe in the metropolitical atmosphere of the capital city. But then I found out they had been brainwashed by a brilliant advertising slogan, ‘Dilli Chalo’. Now this slogan had become so popular with farmers that each day more of them got onto their tractors and ‘chalo-ed’ to Delhi. The Dilli Chalo phenomenon had unofficially become the biggest and baddest agricultural lollapalooza in the world, with thousands of farmers lounging and lazing for almost a year on Delhi highways.

And I think I know the Bangalore advertising agency which came up with this tempting tourism campaign. Now this ad agency was not taking any chances. They had come up with a whole bunch of fun activities like highway blocking and ‘rail roko’. (A popular form of entertainment in urban areas with train services, rail roko-ing was obviously inspired by an old Credence Clearwater Revival song, ‘Who’ll Stop The Train’.)

All these fun activities reminded me of my college days, when students would stop public transport and block roads at the drop of a dare. A fly in the cafeteria soup, teachers asking too many questions, not enough girls in class, bus did not stop in front of college… nostalgic stuff.

Just like our fun loving farmers. It was estimated that the number of farmers blocking the border roads to Delhi was around 150 to 300 thousand. You have to admit that’s a lot of fun. Friendly farmers cooked and shared their food. As you probably know, there’s nothing like the taste of chapattis cooked on a Delhi highway. The urbane urban smog, exhaust fumes of working class vehicles and hot air of puffed up politicians add to the fluffy goodness of roadside rotis. The farmers sang songs of freedom with loud and clear voices. The fun did not stop there. There were tractor rallies and gatherings at important touristy places, including a storming of Delhi’s historic Red Fort and protests at Jantar Mantar. And the whole world took notice of this great get together.

Now the Delhi police are not a tolerant lot. They do not like farmers in general, and especially farmers who are not working in their respective rural fields. So off they went to their arsenal and brought out an assortment of paraphernalia guaranteed to discourage outsiders from entering their beloved city. They put up metal barricades, cement walls and iron nails on roads leading to the capital, to block all kinds of agricultural vehicles from entering Delhi. And if any agile farmers managed to jump or climb over these barriers, they would use tear gas and water cannons on them. In spite of this, a young farmer jumped onto a police water cannon and turned it off. He was later charged with attempted murder.

You might think it was highly irresponsible of these farmers to have such a huge get together during a pandemic. But they took proper precautions. Most of these farmers were vaccinated. Also, they took turns to attend the party, with groups staying for a month or so and returning to their villages, while another fresh and eager group would hurry to Delhi to join in the fun. And there were a lot of volunteer doctors and medical professionals around to monitor the situation. Like this young doctor from the USA who set up Pind California, a health centre for the group at Tikri.

I totally understand why these farmers did what they did. The pandemic was a downer, all these lockdowns were mind numbingly boring, and they could only take so much of tilling and toiling. Under the circumstances, the best option was to do a little Delhi chalo-ing.

Reference
https://thewire.in/agriculture/in-photos-remembering-the-farmers-protest-a-triumph-of-satyagraha-politics