TOMORROW - What's Behind the Uprising of India's Farmers
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- Published on Friday, 29 January 2021 08:18
- Written by editor
Saturday, January 3010 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, 11:30 p.m. IST
What We Can Learn from the Unfolding Uprising of India's Farmers:
A Conversation with Aarti Sethi
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of protesting farmers drove long lines of tractors into India’s capital, breaking through police barricades to storm the historic Red Fort — a deeply symbolic act that revealed the scale of their challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.People throughout India watched on hundreds of TV news channels as farmers seized the fort, which was built in the 17th century and served as the palace of Mughal emperors.
For months, India’s farmers, with supporters from labor, have been blocking key highways connecting the capital of New Delhi with the vast country’s north for months. The angry farmers know that agricultural “reform” legislation adopted in September make them vulnerable to predatory corporate cartels and may well reduce them to destitution. Their protest tactics have included sit-ins, rallies, and warehouse and railway blockades.
How have millions of farmers and their supporters mobilized on a massive scale to fight back against new corporate-friendly laws being imposed by the Modi government? How are they facing some of the biggest corporations in the nation, which clearly have friends in high places? Might farmers and workers actually maintain solidarity and gain a bigger say in decision-making? What lessons have they learned, abandoned, adopted? Will months of peaceful protest be undermined by the eruption of violence and inflame fascist forces?
In this webinar, Aarti Sethi, a leading researcher on the impacts of economic exploitation on India’s farmers, will share her insights into the roots of the farmers' uprising and its prospects for success on any level. Agriculture supports more than half of India's 1.4 billion people.Given the enormity of the country and size of its diverse population, that's a lot to ponder.
Dr. Sethi teaches anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. A socio-cultural anthropologist, her primary interests are in agrarian anthropology, rural life, political economy, and the study of South Asia.
Register now for Zoom. We will also livestream this event on our Facebook page and later post a recording on our YouTube channel.
Register for Aarti Sethi
In recent months, rallies, street demonstrations, sit-ins, and road blockages have marked fierce resistance to neoliberal reforms that would undermine the already precarious economic situation of India's farmers. On November 26, 2020, some 200 million farmers and workers joined together in a one-day nationwide general strike. This massive day of action was called by 10 trade unions and over 250 farmers organizations and was accompanied by huge protests and a near total shutdown of some Indian states. On January 26, India's Republic Day, tens of thousands of farmers drove tractors into the nation's capital and seized the historic Red Fort as the showdown with Narendra Modi's government took on new gravity. Photo: Randeep Maddoke (public domain).
