Looking Back at the Farmers' Protest
Excerpted with permission from Chapter 15 ('Voices from the Andolan: Interviews with Union Leaders and Activists') of The Indian Farmers Protest of 2020-21, published by Routledge.
India witnessed one of its largest farmers’ movements from July 2020 to December 2021. Active mobilisation of farmers from the states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh was orchestrated to protest the three farm laws passed by the Indian government: the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act; the Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act.
This chapter attempts to capture the unfiltered voices of the first-in-line respondents who represented the shared interests of the farming community and the labourers at large. The experiences of farmer union leaders and activists unravel the encounters, plight and emotions of farmers in the field for over 13 months. Through a comprehensively curated questionnaire and interviews that were conducted in January 2022, a month after the end of the long, strenuous protest, this chapter explores how a small-scale dissent unfolded into a massive movement. It documents the experiences of protesters working together with different unions, navigating diverse social identities, and their own personal journeys and learnings from the movement.
The interviewees were selected to incorporate diversity in terms of the kind of people involved in the protest, particularly to make sure that the voices of people from different farmers’ and labour unions, and political activists were included. Efforts were made to include women within the panel, especially one in a position of power within the organisational dynamic. The interviewees were involved in various capacities at the protest, playing different roles ranging from managing finances, procuring food for protesters and setting the stage at the site, among others.
Farmers and labourers from Punjab, India, raise slogans against the farm bills at the Singhu border, National Capital Region, 2020. Photo: Jignesh Mistry
Tejveer Singh, 18 January 2022
Tejveer Singh is a farmer residing in Ambala, Haryana. Born into a family of activists, he participated in the protests from the very beginning. While he is not affiliated to any union formally, he stood in solidarity with the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Charuni), one of the two main farmer unions in Haryana. Singh believed ‘the Centre had been fighting with the farmers since Day 1’. Hence, he and his team worked tirelessly throughout the entire duration of the Andolan, close to 13 months. He has a long history of organising and participating in different agrarian protests, such as protests against the forced land acquisition to construct an industrial model town ship (IMT) in Manesar in 2010.
Christine Moliner and David Singh (edited)
The Indian Farmers’ Protest of 2020–2021 Agrarian Crisis, Dissent and Identity
Routledge, 2025
Singh narrated that the first call from the unions of Punjab and Haryana came on 20 July 2020. A tractor rally was announced, and all the farmers brought their tractors, which roughly amounted to 750. On the same day, the Centre revoked a subsidy received by farmers to buy rotavators (a piece of heavy harvesting machinery). ‘Realising this, we turned August 15 that year as a “Black Day”, and around 7,500 farmers were on the road protesting these actions in Ambala. This is where it all started,’ he explained.
Nothing at the beginning of the Andolan (protest) was pre-planned. After the tractor rally, all they had planned was a chakka jam (‘blockading roads’) on 5 November 2020, when the farm bills were passed in the Indian Parliament. Subsequently, a Bharat bandh (‘nationwide strike’) was declared on 15 November 2020 when the President had given assent to the farm bills passed by Parliament, making them laws. This was decided at a meeting on 17 October 2020. Singh said:
All we knew was either we go forward, or we die and we would stay where we were stopped by the police. Despite certain skirmishes with them, such as breaking barricades and subsequent retaliation by the Punjabi youth at the Ambala border, the protesters stepped in and made it clear that their enemies were the state and not the police.
After failed negotiations with the Centre, when more farmers started reaching Delhi, the state forces attempted to stop the protesters and used tear gas, following which the farmers decided not to go anywhere and stay where they were.
According to Singh, farmer unions, such as Kisan Mukti Sangram Samiti, and different jathe bandiyans (‘union coalitions’), such as Ugrahan and Dakunda, guided the Andolan and amplified the farmers’ concerns. The main role of these unions was to mobilise people by explaining the drawbacks of the farm laws in layman’s terms. ‘This was done by invoking examples of farmers from Uttar Pradesh coming to faraway cities to sell their produce due to the inexistence of markets where they come from,’ he commented.
The unions also managed the funds for the protest, which came mostly through donations. He explained:
We used to collect money from each village by explaining to them the reason and the cause for the protests. For example, we collected INR 2,100 from each village when we wanted money to organise the tractor rallies. We collected INR 500 from each village for the ‘Black Day’ programme on 15 August. Moreover, we also requested each family to save some money so that it can be used to fund their fuel expenses and so on when they participate in the tractor rally.
At the protest site, gurdwaras under the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), such as Gurdwara Mardon Sahib and Gurdwara Lakhnaur Sahib, helped by arranging langars (Sikh tradition of a ‘free communal kitchen’) to feed the protesters. These gurdwaras were the primary donation collectors and provided approximately 200–400 quintals of rice, dal (‘lentils’) and atta (‘unre fined wheat flour’) every single day. These donations were then coordinated and sent to around 200 villages that were connected to Singh and his team.
Tractors and trolleys parked on the National Highway at the Singhu border, National Capital Region, 2020. Photo: Jignesh Mistry
Singh felt that the effective communication strategy helped them coordinate different duties among various unions. ‘Many meetings were conducted by dif ferent farmer unions and the 32 jathe bandiyans in places such as Chandigarh. WhatsApp groups helped us to stay connected and communicate information quickly and effectively,’ he pointed out. ‘We made sure that there were meetings conducted in at least ten villages every day to help communicate with the farmers,’ he said, talking about keeping the momentum alive among the farmers. ‘Moreover, we had set up our own social media handles and Twitter han dles such as @KisanEktaMorcha, which helped us to give information about everything and spread it among people easily,’ he explained.
The media also helped further their cause and aided them in propagating their message better, especially the TV channels operating within Punjab. ‘Along with online media sites such as The Wire and Newslaundry, other Punjabi news and YouTube channels helped us,’ he said. The Godi media1 though, he men tioned, had been actively involved in maligning the motives and methods of the protests. ‘It is the editors who get to have the final say and depict us in a bad light. The cameraman, the on-ground journalists, and others know our struggle and we were usually happy to give them interviews,’ he said, reinforcing it with his own experiences of giving many interviews to these media houses. ‘The protesters were simple people and had not been edu cated, and all they knew was that they had been protesting and that the Godi media had been spewing hate against us,’ he commented.
When asked about whether this Andolan can be called a Sikh Andolan, Singh said:
It may not be correct to say that it was a Sikh Andolan, but it was an Andolan fought along with the Sikh beliefs. There were many people from many states such as Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh who also came and fought in these protests.
For instance, he mentioned how protesters wanted to follow the Sikh principle of manav-seva (‘service to humankind’) propagated by Guru Gobind Singh.
Speaking on the religious representation, he explained how the Andolan was in line with the Tis Hazari incident, where a 30,000-strong force, led by Baba Baghel Singh, laid siege to the Red Fort, fighting the Mughal forces in 1783. He mentioned:
Even at those times, Quran was read, Itihaas, Puranas and the Hanuman Chalisa were read and recited, showing that there was religious unity. It was a struggle and a form of protest at that time, and the farm protests are a repetition of the same.
On women’s participation and contribution to the movement, he explained how agriculture was not only a way of life and livelihood for them but also part of their culture. Women, he said, are the ones who handle the finances of their households, and also decide how to donate the rest of their income to gurdwaras and temples. Speaking about his own family, he said:
If not for my mother, my father would not have been able to wake up every morning and work on the farms. My own mother reared cattle to pay for my schooling and college. My mother, who also participated in the protests, told in her speech that she is the daughter of a farmer, a wife of a farmer and a mother of a farmer.
He also expressed his discontentment with the neglect of women’s labour in important reports involving agriculture, such as the Swaminathan Commission Report.
Women protesters jathe bandiyans from Punjab arrive at the Tikri border, National Capital Region, 2020. Photo: Jignesh Mistry
Speaking on the involvement of different castes in the protests, he said that several castes, especially the dehatis (‘landless farm labourers often from lower caste backgrounds’), helped in leading the movement to its fruition. This is because there is an ecosystem that exists between the landed castes and the landless labourers. He said:
These landless labourers reared cattle and sold milk and milk products to generate side income, for which we provide grass and fodder from our lands. Therefore, the farm laws and the protests became important for them too. They helped us procuring milk from around 200–300 villages around Haryana, amounting to 5–8 quintals of milk every day.
He also spoke about the involvement of the Jats and the Gujjars, who helped them in setting up camps and using their social media space to talk about the protests. Needless to say, there were other castes that did not support them. He elaborated by saying:
I can give to you in writing and with proof that there were two castes that did not stand by us because of some prominent Hindu ideas that led their systems. They were the Yadavs and the Rajput Ranas. They even attacked us at the borders.
Talking about the involvement of the Adivasi tribes, he said:
There were Adivasi groups and tribal leaders from Madhya Pradesh who wanted to and did support our cause, such as the Meena Samaj (of the Meena tribe). Unfortunately, we were not able to support them as we had running costs within the protests, and we could not divert the funds towards their participation and stay. Moreover, rail tickets were not being issued easily due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
Speaking on their further plans, Singh insisted that their demands have still not been met. He went on to explain:
Moreover, we have so many more demands such as the guarantee of MSPs, implementation of the Swaminathan Committee Report, easier procurement of seeds at a cheaper price, increasing the scale of cooperative societies and so on.
He ended by saying:
Moreover, to protect ourselves, we need to try to be self-sufficient, in such a way that the income that is produced in the village stays within the village. I am a farmer from Punjab and Haryana, and I know that we farmers can produce everything within our own villages except salt and tea.
Therefore, becoming self-sufficient is the key to making sure that the income we generate stays within the village and is not lost due to migra tion. To achieve this, it is important for cooperative societies to be strengthened to easily fight corporatism and corporates that try to meddle with agriculture and pave the way for migration of people and incomes.
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