Af­ter the In­dian farm­ers’ move­ment achieved a his­toric vic­tory in forc­ing the BJP gov­ern­ment to re­peal the three farm laws passed last year, Dr Pri­tam Singh, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus, Ox­ford Brookes Busi­ness School, Ox­ford, UK out­lines three im­por­tant di­men­sions, in­ter­na­tional, re­gional and Pun­jab-level, of the fu­ture tasks of the farm­ers’ move­ment in Pun­jab. At the level of Pun­jab, he seeks a peo­ple’s agenda and a com­mon elec­toral ap­proach for the forth­com­ing Pun­jab elec­tions.

TO WIT, ON THE IN­TER­NA­TIONAL LEVEL, THE KEY TASK for the farm­ers’ move­ment is of re­sist­ing global cap­i­tal­ism, na­tion­ally, it is against the cen­tral­i­sa­tion of eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal power, and in­ter­nally within Pun­jab, it is for fight­ing for eco­log­i­cal and so­cial egal­i­tar­i­an­ism.

At a global level, the agro-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions’ at­tack on agri­cul­ture, which was ex­pressed through the three farm laws, was an ex­pres­sion of the gen­eral cap­i­tal­ist phe­nom­e­non of bring­ing all hu­man labour and eco­log­i­cal re­sources in the am­bit of cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion. That global cap­i­tal­ist agenda and its In­dian man­i­fes­ta­tion are still there, they have been pushed back but not de­feated. 

While the agenda of global and In­dian agro-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions has faced a tem­po­rary set­back, they would now be plan­ning their counter-strate­gies to re-as­sert their power and con­trol. The In­dian farm­ers’ move­ment must grasp the re­al­ity that the world bal­ance of power is cur­rently not one of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion of over­throw­ing cap­i­tal­ism but to con­stantly track the global cap­i­tal­ist agenda and de­vise many long and pa­tient strug­gles in al­liance with move­ments of farm­ers, labour­ers, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and in­dige­nous peo­ple in all parts of the world to re­sist the reach of global and In­dian cap­i­tal­ism.

At a na­tional level, apart from ex­ert­ing con­stant pres­sure to get the re­main­ing de­mands of the farm­ers’ move­ment in­clud­ing the one re­lat­ing to MSP ac­cepted, the crit­i­cal task re­mains of fight­ing against con­tin­ued cen­tral­i­sa­tion of eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal power in In­dia and for fed­eral de­vo­lu­tion of pow­ers and de­ci­sion mak­ing. Linked to that task of strug­gling for fed­eral de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion, is the medium-term task of fight­ing for a change in the cur­rent first past the post elec­toral sys­tem and for strength­en­ing in­sti­tu­tions of democ­racy. 

It is the per­ver­sity of the first past the post elec­toral sys­tem, that the BJP by win­ning just over 30 per cent of the vote in the whole of In­dia, has been able to win over 300 seats out of 543. The strug­gle for fed­er­al­ism and change to the pro­por­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tion vot­ing sys­tem would de­mand co­or­di­nated ac­tion with re­gional po­lit­i­cal par­ties prin­ci­pally against BJP which is to­tally com­mit­ted to cen­tral­i­sa­tion and first past the post elec­toral sys­tem but also against the Con­gress if it does not change it­self in favour of fed­er­al­ism and pro­por­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tion. 

It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand the con­tra­dic­tory role of MSP in the con­text of the na­tional di­men­sion of the task. While it has been the cen­tral de­mand of the farm­ers’ move­ment for an MSP to give rea­son­able in­come to farm­ers, it should be fought for but the dan­ger of hand­ing the power of set­ting the MSP for all crops to the Cen­tre will fur­ther en­trench cen­tral­i­sa­tion. It should be viewed as a tem­porar­ily needed de­mand but in the long run, the de­mand should be to give the pow­ers of set­ting and im­ple­ment­ing MSP at the state level be­cause each state gov­ern­ment knows and un­der­stands best what crops are most suit­able for each state. Agri­cul­ture as a state sub­ject must be de­fended and cen­tral in­tru­sion into agri­cul­ture must be op­posed.

Within Pun­jab, the cen­tral task is to fight for an eco­nomic model that pro­motes eco­log­i­cal and so­cial egal­i­tar­i­an­ism. The deep­en­ing of cap­i­tal­ist pen­e­tra­tion in Pun­jab agri­cul­ture since the Green Rev­o­lu­tion of the 1960s has ad­versely af­fected egal­i­tar­i­an­ism and so­cial equal­ity. The cen­tral in­ter­ven­tion in Pun­jab agri­cul­ture was used by the In­dian state to achieve the cen­tral gov­ern­men­t’s po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic ob­jec­tive of achiev­ing food self-suf­fi­ciency. 

Pun­jabi farm­ers made eco­nomic gains tem­porar­ily for a few years, but the Green Rev­o­lu­tion left long term dam­ag­ing im­pacts on Pun­jab. Eco­log­i­cally, the pen­e­tra­tion of cap­i­tal­ism in Pun­jab agri­cul­ture led to view­ing hu­man labour and all forms of na­ture- land, wa­ter, mines, forests, an­i­mals and birds- as re­sources for ex­ploita­tion for profit-mak­ing. This has led to a meta­bolic rift from na­ture with hor­ri­fy­ing con­se­quences in the form of the rise of the cul­ture of vi­o­lence against na­ture and hu­man be­ings. 

Vi­o­lence against na­ture is re­flected through de­for­esta­tion, wa­ter ex­haus­tion, land degra­da­tion and air pol­lu­tion. This has led to a rise in ill­nesses and a wors­en­ing of qual­ity of life. Re­ject­ing vi­o­lence against na­ture, re­spect for na­ture needs to be re­cap­tured to cre­ate a sus­tain­able econ­omy and a healthy so­ci­ety. 

So­cially, the deep­en­ing of cap­i­tal­ism in Pun­jab has led to in­equal­i­ties never seen be­fore at this level. On one hand, it has led to a small elite be­com­ing mil­lion­aires –crorepatis and arab­patis and on the other hand to the ma­jor­ity of the pop­u­la­tion dri­ven into in­debt­ed­ness, des­ti­tu­tion and sui­cides. Gen­der and caste in­equal­i­ties have also mul­ti­plied. 

An agenda of re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, prop­erty and in­come in con­so­nance with Baba Nanak’s ideal of Wand Chakna -shar­ing the fruits of labour and against maya is the need of the hour to build a so­cially just and peace­ful Pun­jabi so­ci­ety. The cul­ture of sol­i­dar­ity and shared to­geth­er­ness –san­jhi­walta that de­vel­oped dur­ing the farm­ers’ protest showed the po­ten­tial that the neg­a­tive fea­tures of cap­i­tal­ism can be re­sisted even if not fully re­moved. That cul­ture and those pro­gres­sive prac­tices learnt dur­ing the strug­gle need to be strength­ened and em­bed­ded in every­day life in Pun­jabi so­ci­ety to make them sus­tain­able in the long run.

To achieve the ful­fil­ment of tasks iden­ti­fied for Pun­jab, it is of cen­tral im­por­tance that the gov­ern­ment that comes into power in 2022 is com­mit­ted to these tasks. For this pur­pose, well thought out elec­tion strat­egy is of key im­por­tance. 

BJP is craft­ing a counter-strat­egy to de­stroy the farm­ers’ move­ment by cap­tur­ing power in Pun­jab so that a Sikh chief min­is­ter and a po­lice chief on the pat­tern of Beant Singh-KPS Gill model dur­ing the Con­gress regime can be used against the farm­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tions. 

At this mo­ment, the pres­tige of farm­ers or­gan­i­sa­tions and farm­ers lead­ers is at its peak. This good­will needs to be re­flected in the elec­tion out­come. The farm­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tion should agree be­tween them­selves that those who want to fight elec­tions have valid rea­sons along with those who do not want to fight elec­tions have ra­tio­nal rea­sons for not do­ing so. De­spite these dif­fer­ences, a com­mon Kisan Maz­door List of 117 good qual­ity can­di­dates should be pre­pared with care­ful think­ing for fight­ing the 2022 as­sem­bly elec­tions. All or­gan­i­sa­tions should sup­port that list. 

If the Kisan Maz­door List wins the ma­jor­ity, it can form the gov­ern­ment. If it does not win the ma­jor­ity, it can ei­ther be a part of a coali­tion gov­ern­ment or in strong op­po­si­tion sta­tus. Ei­ther way, the cause the farm­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tion fought for pro­tect­ing Pun­jab agri­cul­ture from agro-busi­ness cap­i­tal­ist take over will be ad­vanced through such an elec­tion out­come.  

De­spite these dif­fer­ences, a com­mon Kisan Maz­door List of 117 good qual­ity can­di­dates should be pre­pared with care­ful think­ing for fight­ing the 2022 as­sem­bly elec­tions. All or­gan­i­sa­tions should sup­port that list.

BJP is craft­ing a counter-strat­egy to de­stroy the farm­ers’ move­ment by cap­tur­ing power in Pun­jab so that a Sikh chief min­is­ter and a po­lice chief on the pat­tern of Beant Singh-KPS Gill model dur­ing the Con­gress regime can be used against the farm­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tions. Once Pun­jab’s farm­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tions are de­stroyed, the BJP is con­fi­dent that the In­dian farm­ers’ move­ment would be crip­pled. It may not suc­ceed in its counter-strat­egy but the dan­gers it pre­sents need to be fully un­der­stood to de­feat it. 

Pro­tect­ing agri­cul­ture from global cap­i­tal­ist takeover is the fu­ture of pro­tect­ing hu­man­ity from eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe. Pun­jab needs to be the pi­o­neer in craft­ing eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and cul­tural strate­gies to re­alise that goal of pro­tect­ing agri­cul­ture, na­ture and hu­man­ity. 

The Pun­jabi it­er­a­tion of this ar­ti­cle was first pub­lished in the Pun­jabi Tri­bune.

Dr Pri­tam Singh has a DPhil from the Uni­ver­sity of Ox­ford and is Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Ox­ford Brookes Busi­ness School. He is the au­thor of ‘Fed­er­al­ism, Na­tion­al­ism and De­vel­op­ment: In­dia and the Pun­jab Econ­omy.’  In June 2015, he was awarded the Dis­tin­guished Achieve­ment Award in Po­lit­i­cal Econ­omy For The Twenty-First Cen­tury by the World As­so­ci­a­tion of Po­lit­i­cal Econ­omy at its Tenth Fo­rum held at Jo­han­nes­burg, South Africa, and in May 2021, the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia (River­side) ho­n­oured him with a ‘Life­time Achieve­ment Award for his dis­tin­guished con­tri­bu­tion to the Pun­jab Re­search Group in the UK to pro­mote Sikh and Pun­jab Stud­ies.’