The number and size of protest meetings or Mahapanchayats across villages of North India against the government’s obduracy on farm laws recalls the crisis faced by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2011. Six years into power, and with just about three years to go till the next general elections, its credibility was so eroded by… Read More Bharat Bhushan: How farm protests may change political equations and hurt BJP in key states

The irony of this is lost on a government drowning in its testesterone: with every nail studded barricade installed at Tikri, Ghazipur or Singhu, Delhi is making itself progressively redundant to the ongoing course of events, and perhaps even to the future shape of things in India. A subterranean tsunami is slowly building in the… Read More Avay Shukla – ARE THE FARMERS MAKING DELHI IRRELEVANT ?

NB: 42,480 Indian farmers and daily-wage workers dependent on agriculture committed suicide in 2019; 28 Indians dependent on farming commit suicide every day (some estimates are much higher).  About 300,000 famers had committed suicide by 2014; we can estimate how many more have killed themselves since then. There is also the suspicion the figures are higher… Read More Rihanna and Greta prompt an MEA outburst — and a hashtag firestorm

 With Kisans, Against Repression  Join Citizens March in Support of Farmers’ Movement   3rd February, 12 noon Mandi House to Jantar Mantar  Repeal the Anti-farmer Laws! No to Company Raj! Release Farmers and Student-Youth arrested by Police Stop Intimidating Journalists with FIR’s and False cases organised by:  AICCTU, AIPWA, AISA,AISF, ANHAD, CYSS, DSF, DSU, DYFI, JNUSU, JSM, KYS, MSF, NFIW,… Read More Citizens March in Support of Farmers' Movement -3rd February, 12 noon

Curtains came down on the first phase of the farmers’ agitation amid a growing perception that the events of January 26 in Delhi were a ‘conspiracy’ to malign and delegitimise the movement. It has now entered a second phase where it will be potentially less tractable. Following its ham-handed playbook, the Narendra Modi government tried to criminalise… Read More Bharat Bhushan: Farmers' agitation against three new laws acquires an anti-BJP edge

The logic of the state’s political strategy is to find any pretext for social division and state repression. The immediate elite reactions to the unruly and shameful scenes in the wake of the farmers’ protest in India’s capital, especially at the Red Fort, were two-fold. The first was to feign shock and horror, and to… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The real darkness on horizon