Be­fore you go ec­sta­tic and start burst­ing crack­ers at the with­drawal of the three farm laws by In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, here are some ques­tions that the Kisan Mor­cha needs to con­sider be­fore de­cid­ing if it wants to wind up stuff and call it a vic­tory. Naren­dra Modi has cho­sen the oc­ca­sion of Gur­purab of Guru Nanak Sahib, clearly in­di­cat­ing that he is ad­dress­ing the farm­ers of Pun­jab, more than any­body else.  The strug­gle was and is much big­ger and has wide-rang­ing im­pli­ca­tions. The World Sikh News en­lists 15 ques­tions that need to be an­swered.

NAREN­DRA MODI has de­fined what VIC­TORY should look like. DO YOU HAVE your own de­f­i­n­i­tion of what you will call VIC­TORY?  The World Sikh News pre­sents a list of unan­swered con­cerns and de­mands.

JUST A RE­MINDER OF PEND­ING DE­MANDS RAISED AND FOUGHT FOR BY THE FARM­ERS:

1. A law to give a guar­an­tee of MSP on all crops across In­dia.

2. Aug­men­ta­tion and strength­en­ing of the pro­cure­ment sys­tem, anaaj man­dis, stor­age sys­tem of godowns or si­los across In­dia, in­clud­ing in re­gions where there is vir­tu­ally no state or FCI pro­cure­ment in place.

3. The re­lease of all dis­senters, civil so­ci­ety ac­tivists and those ar­rested for ex­press­ing opin­ions con­trary to the regime’s nar­ra­tive of hate, Hin­dutva & neo-nazi phi­los­o­phy. The ac­count­abil­ity for all the farm­ers who died dur­ing the year-long strug­gle.

4. Re­in­state­ment of real fed­er­al­ism in the coun­try – since the three agri­cul­ture-re­lated laws were passed by vi­o­lat­ing the fed­eral struc­ture the same way the regime had passed a law to scrap Art 370 in Jammu and Kash­mir.

5. Ac­tion against and ac­count­abil­ity of those who termed the protest­ing farm­ers as ‘ter­ror­ists’ and built a hate cam­paign against them in the coun­try.

6. End to the pau­peri­sa­tion of farm­ers and agri­cul­tural labour­ers.

7. Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of those whose earn­ing fam­ily mem­bers were pushed to­wards com­mit­ting sui­cide.

8. Struc­tural changes in agri­cul­ture since 2,500 farm­ers are pushed out of agri­cul­ture every sin­gle day.

9. Pun­jab’s three uni­ver­si­ties counted the num­ber of farm sui­cides in Pun­jab’s 23 dis­tricts and found these to be sev­eral times more than the Gov­ern­ment of In­di­a’s of­fi­cial data. Now, the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment has stopped giv­ing any funds to the three uni­ver­si­ties to count how many com­mit­ted sui­cides last year, and the Cen­tral gov­ern­ment has re­fused to make any changes in data gath­er­ing to get the real num­bers.

10. Where is any deal with the agri­cul­tural labour­ers and wider Dalit sis­ters and brethren who made an im­mense con­tri­bu­tion to the Kisan Mor­cha in the last year?

11. What about the raise in the min­i­mum wages man­dated by the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia?

12. Why is MGN­REGA run so poorly in Pun­jab? Where are the le­gal pro­vi­sions and guar­an­tees for the proper op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of MGN­REGA?

13. Why is the MGN­REGA wage not linked to the min­i­mum wage?

14. The ques­tion of land re­forms has not even been touched by the Kisan Mor­cha, and there has been no in­ter­ven­tion on this score by the Cen­tral gov­ern­ment. Is this the fi­nal and most ef­fec­tive set­tle­ment deal be­tween the Modi gov­ern­ment and the Kisan Mor­cha? Why is every­one silent on Land Re­forms?

15. The Kisan Mor­cha was widely seen as a bul­wark against the hate ma­chine of Modi-Yogi-Amit Shah. Has it any fur­ther job left to do, or was it only meant for three eco­nomic de­mands?

To a peo­ple brought up on ‘Guru in Mec­ca’ fa­bles about the di­rec­tion in which God re­sides, here is a gen­tle re­minder about our sit­u­a­tion to­day: Within a stone’s throw of the Kisan Mor­cha, peo­ple of a com­mu­nity are fac­ing a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion if they try to of­fer na­maz in pub­lic. Some Sikhs have set an ex­am­ple by of­fer­ing Gu­rud­wara premises to them to say their na­maz. That’s how you fight hate –full frontal and openly.

The Kisan Mor­cha should do the same. It has to stand up and stay stand­ing. There is much work to be done. YOU WENT TO FIGHT A WAR. Don’t end it just be­cause you won a bat­tle.