Spotlight
New Delhi, 21 April, 2017
Champaran
Centenary
FARMERS AWAIT
ANOTHER GANDHI
By Moin Qazi
This is the centenary year of the Champaran
Satyagraha (policy of
passive political resistance), the first
experiment by Mahatma Gandhi of his epic philosophy. This
tool was to become Gandhi’s most powerful amour and earned him a cherished and
coveted place in the pantheon of world’s legendary leaders.
Gandhi launched his satyagraha in Champaran district on April 17, 1917. During the 31st session of the
Congress in Lucknow
in 1916, Gandhi met Raj Kumar Shukla, a representative of farmers from
Champaran, who requested him to go and see for himself the miseries of the
indigo ryots (tenant
farmers) of Champaran. He responded immediately and among those he mobilised
was Dr Rajendra Prasad, later to become independent India’s firs President.
Gandhi arrived for the first time in Patna on April 10, 1917, and five days later,
he reached Motihari, the district headquarters of Champaran, from Muzaffarpur.
On April 17, he set off on his Champaran Satyagraha. No one could imagine that
Gandhi’s visit would snowball into the first peaceful protest.
It was at Champaran that the transformation from Mohandas
Gandhi into Mahatma Gandhi began. One of
the most important outcomes of this movement was the enactment of the Champaran
Agrarian Act, which gave several concessions to farmers. Gandhi’s movement was
a political campaign operating in a more hostile environment than what it is today.
Yet it brought lasting reform without alienating the Opposition. Gandhi used
this technique for the first time and specifically for justice for the farmers.
Buoyed by its powerful moral impact, without any physical fallout, he made it
his universal weapon for all crusades. Along with ahimsa (non-violence) it
forms the twin stand of the DNA of Gandhian philosophy.
Gandhian scholars and activists believe that the state of
farmers in and around Champaran and other parts of the country is no better now
than the condition of Indigo farmers in 1917, which had brought Gandhi to the
State in the first place.
While indentured labour, which was one of the targets of
satyagraha, has been abolished many of the issues of farmers that Gandhi
championed during his protest continue to bedevil farmers. The famers
desperately await another Gandhi for their redemption.
The roots of despair of the Indian farmers have been well
researched and documented. They are a toxic blend of: livelihoods drained away
by spiraling debt and predatory
moneylenders; soil tired on account of heavy doses of chemical fertilizer, crops
and livestock destroyed by drought or
unseasonable monsoon rains associated with climate change; plummeting water
tables from relentless
water mining; loss of agricultural land to development; collapse in cotton prices and growing expenses on genetic-engineered hybrid seeds ;
total breakdown of agricultural
extension support and near absence of rural mental health services.
Despite their huge numbers, small farmers are not a
solidified block and have not articulated their political and negotiating
power. According to Ashutosh Varshney, Professor
of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University,
social divisions within the countryside have been the main reason why India’s rural
voters have failed to push for policies that boost farm and rural incomes.
Varshney argues that their large size and
heterogeneity limits their influence on public policy. Farmers’ refusal to give
precedence to their economic interests over their other interests and loyalties
(such as to castes and ethnic groups) have limited their influence over public
policies.
Years of market-oriented reforms have unleashed a wave of
capital and entrepreneurialism across India. But despite high-end sectors
such as information technology making impressive strides and adulatory
portrayals of India
at home and abroad as an economic juggernaut, the benefits of reform have yet
to extend to the hundreds of millions who toil on the land. The government has
slashed or phased out subsidies for some crops, shredding a key safety net. The
result is a growing social crisis.
Fueled by crushing debt for buying transgenic seeds, failing
crops on account of abuse of soil by fertilizers, squeezing of prices by big
multinational and sheer government indifference, the farmers are trekking to
cities where an equally cruel fate awaits them but they are saved the shame of
humiliation in the eyes of their own fellow villagers. A sense of deep despair
runs through the lives of farmers. They have lost all hopes -- and also the
will to fight. Many of them are taking a permanent escape from this physical
and emotional pain by ingesting deadly pesticides.
The government needs to revamp its extension services so
that farmers have access to the latest technology and field practices. The
agricultural universities must be involved for creating tailored educational
programmes that serves the diverse needs of India’s huge rural population. Small farmers need to learn how to work with
limited land areas in a productive and environmentally friendly way. They need
not only better plant species, but also up-to-date guidance on growing these. They
don’t need high-tech tractors controlled by satellites, but they do need access
to regional databases that provide information on soil quality. They need
access to affordable capital so that they don’t pile up unmanageable loads of
debt.
An estimated 52 per cent of the
country’s 90 million rural agricultural households have one debt or another. Agriculture’s share in the
national economy has declined in recent decades, prompting banks to lend more
to other productive economic sectors thanks to increased competition from
private and foreign banks.
With institutional credit drying up for farmers, local harks
have taken the place of banks, who charge an arm and a leg and are creating a
debt-trap for the farmers who rely on crop success –and prayers –for loan
repayments. But a suicide does not absolve the rest of the family from paying
back a loan. Unlike a bank loan which is squared by the government’s waiver
package, the moneylender’s loan has to be atoned by the distraught family.
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru said in 1947: “Everything can wait, but not agriculture.” But what India is
witnessing is exactly the reverse. All the paths of the Indian economy are
surging ahead. Agriculture is the solitary one that is beating a path back in
retreat. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News & Feature Alliance)
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