India's Farmer Protests: Why Are They So Angry?
NASHIK, India – In a dusty lot outside a wholesale market in western India, farmer Ambadas Sanap leans on the lip of his flatbed truck, surrounded by crates of green peppers and tomatoes. If he could get away from all this for just one day, he says, he'd travel to the capital to protest.
He wants his voice to be heard.
But Sanap, 44, cannot afford to take time off from laboring in his fields or hawking his produce at this sprawling government-run wholesale yard. He's got nine family members to feed.
He just sold a full crate of tomatoes for 40 rupees (about $.55 USD). The most he'll gross in a month is the equivalent of about $300. After expenses, he's lucky to break even.
Sanap is one of the approximately 800 million Indians whose primary source of livelihood is agriculture. Tens of thousands of them have amassed in New Delhi for more than three months, protesting moves by the Indian government to deregulate wholesale trading. They see those technical changes as a betrayal of traditional government support that over decades helped India end widespread famine and helped many farmers survive.
Millions more, like Sanap, watch from afar with admiration but even more anxiety, that their local concerns may be lost in a movement dominated by northern Indian grain growers and championed by activists from abroad. The protests have devolved into political bickering over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, overshadowing the original debate over how to improve the way Indian crops are bought and sold.
The government hasn't helped: It's that tweeted support for the farmers or criticism of its treatment of on suspicion of sedition for allegedly sharing tips on how to drum up support for the protests online. Its authoritarian tactics have grabbed headlines, burying the agriculture debate even further.
