Farmers Movement Archive

Lakhimpur Kheri outrage shifts political discourse

SOME tyre treads leave a lasting imprint. Over 10 months after the protests against the farm laws began, a violent sequence of events took place in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district. In a video, now circulating on social media, an SUV can be seen just running over farmers walking on a road. The incident, now amplified through news and video clips, subsequently shows a car burning and men being thrashed, and reportedly three BJP workers too met a bloody death. A journalist, who had allegedly recorded footage of the vehicle running over citizens, died of gunshot wounds.There are good reasons for any ruling party to worry if its own members are accused of mowing down people who till the land. In June 2017, six protesting farmers were killed in police firing in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, then under BJP rule. That incident is believed to have been a factor in the dethroning of Shivraj Singh Chouhan in the state elections in 2018 that the Congress won (although it subsequently lost the government after a split and defections and Chouhan returned as CM).The Yogi Adityanath government has so far acted both characteristically tough, and uncharacteristically mildly conciliatory. It bordered on the dictatorial with any opposition figure who wished to travel to the site, even as it shut the Internet in Lakhimpur Kheri.Simultaneously, it did not want to appear tyrannical in its dealings with farmers and sent its trusted ADIG (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar for a photo opportunity next to BKU leader Rakesh Tikait, who has been active in mobilising the UP leg of the farm agitation. The government offered a compensation of Rs 45 lakh to the families of each of the dead farmers and Rs 10 lakh to the injured, while agreeing to a judicial probe of the incident and the lodging of an FIR against accused Ashish Mishra, son of MoS (Home) Ajay Mishra, and the minister himself.The minister must now resign or be sacked to give the probe any meaning. Indeed, a week earlier, he had made a threatening speech, saying that he could clear the protests in two minutes if he wished to. A Brahmin strongman from the region, Ajay Mishra also said that Khalistanis and terrorists were embedded in the protests and it was this speech that had reportedly put the agitators on the edge. Many Sikhs are farmers in the fertile Terai belt of UP and this choice of words suggests an unfortunate profiling of an entire community.Simultaneously, it must be noted that the instinctive go-to position for the current regime has been to try to delegitimise any protest by saying the protesters are anti-national/terrorists. The minister’s words were in keeping with the BJP’s narrative built over months and put forward by sections in the broadcast and social media: that the protests were dangerous, illegitimate, a disruption of public order and against national interest.Indeed, the groups at the forefront of the farm protest see ominous portents in recent utterances of the Supreme Court that reportedly asked what the need for protests was when the laws they are agitating against have not been notified and are currently stayed by the courts. The farm leaders say they have not approached the court in this matter and whosoever has done so is not acting on their behalf. They worry that court utterances may be used to create a pretext for clearing the main protest sites on the borders of Delhi.For, the endgame of the BJP is to not give up on the farm laws that seek to bring the corporate sector into agriculture. There is arguably too much at stake for the BJP to do so. Ever since it rammed the laws through Parliament in a manner that raised many questions, it has been frustrated at being unable to notify them. But at no point has there been any suggestion that the party is inclined to rescind the laws, which is the maximalist demand of one of the largest and most consistent protest movements in contemporary times.The BJP’s calculations are based on several assumptions. First, it is committed to the corporatisation of agriculture. It also believed, till now, that it could manage the fallout of the farm protests in most states, with the exception of Punjab, where arguably every village has participated in the protest. The BJP knows it does not have much left to lose in Punjab, anyway. Elections in the BJP-ruled Haryana, the other impacted state, are some time away: they take place a few months after the 2024 General Election. Which is why it is in Haryana that we have seen the experiment with a tough line with the protesters.Indeed, on the day the violence in UP erupted, social media circulated a controversial video clip of Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, which his media adviser subsequently said was being seen out of context. On October 3, he was recorded telling BJP workers to form groups and get tough with the protesting farmers and ‘take up sticks’ without worrying if they would be in jail for a few months, as after that their names would go down in history. It was in Haryana, too, that we saw an IAS officer recently telling policemen to ‘break heads’ of protesting farmers.When the electoral game in Haryana is really afoot, the BJP also believes that it can use a certain Jat vs non-Jat social dynamic that translates to electoral arithmetic. Meanwhile, high-profile Haryana MP and Congress politician Deepender Singh Hooda was manhandled by the UP police when he accompanied Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to Lakhimpur Kheri, a journey cut short by the state administration. The overkill in arresting opposition figures certainly displayed a certain nervousness of the UP regime.Uttar Pradesh is a state with many regional variations, including those in the farming community. Certainly, western UP has been the most impacted by the agitation, but now it has also become a potent factor in the Terai region where the violence took place. This region extends to a part of Uttarakhand, also an election-bound state. The larger question is whether this incident would be a catalyst for political change in the large state that has several distinct zones.The BJP believes it has time on its hands to forcefully put forward other narratives built on identity, such as Hindutva/communalism and by building strong caste coalitions. It argues that the farm agitation is not an overwhelming issue in the state but just a flash in a very large pan that can be managed. It certainly has the most formidable cadres and financial resources of all parties that will contest the Assembly polls. In the last round of voting in 2019 in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP/RSS poll managers had the election management down to each booth with a correct assessment of which way the wind was blowing.Still, no matter how strong a ruling regime is or how weak an opposition, there are certain events that shift narratives. The BJP is, therefore, worried about the implications of the bloody events that have just taken place.

The Tribune

2021-10-06