Modi’s way out is to sit down with Rakesh Tikait, draft new farm laws: Julio Ribeiro
Opinion

Modi’s way out is to sit down with Rakesh Tikait, draft new farm laws: Julio Ribeiro

Protesting farmers are ready to wait until Gandhi Jayanti for the Centre to relent and repeal farm laws. Modi govt can't afford to be held to ransom for a whole year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivering a virtual address in New Delhi on 18 December | PTI Photo

File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi | PTI

The demand of the farmers of Punjab and Haryana for the repeal of the three agricultural laws, now taken up in a big way by the farmers of Uttar Pradesh led by Bharatiya Kisan Union spokesperson Rakesh Tikait, has held the political centre stage for the past three months. It is easily the most ticklish situation the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah government has faced until now with a solution nowhere in sight. Tikait, who has seemingly emerged as the leader of the protests, has declared that the farmers will wait until Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s 152nd birth anniversary on 2 October for the government to relent. Until then, the roads to Delhi will be blocked by agitating farmers and spiked with nails and barricaded by a nervous police force.

The Modi government cannot afford to be held to ransom for a whole year. It has to work out a solution and it needs to do it quickly. It cannot afford to alienate farmers of all people in the country. Our soldiers are drawn largely from the peasantry. Any perceived injustice to farmers will indirectly affect the morale of our fighting men and women.

There is another lurking danger. Punjab’s farmers are at the forefront of the agitation. They had rejected ‘Khalistani terrorists’ and handed them over to the police when they felt that the Khalistan movement was hurting their interests. But malcontents can revive this nuisance if the Modi-Shah government handles the situation in a ham-handed manner. In particular, the government should not operationalise its ‘dirty tricks’ department to get the farmers off its back. That will be counter-productive.

The government is also well advised not to behave like a bull in a China shop. It should not open new fronts against respected journalists and opposition leaders. It is suicidal to take them on at a time when the farmers’ issue is the most urgent one to settle. Tikait’s farmers had supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the last two Lok Sabha elections. There is a danger of losing their support and if that happens, the dissatisfaction may spread to other sectors of the economy. From all angles, the Modi government has much to lose if the farmers are not mollified quickly.


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Consult the farm leaders

Here, we need to pause and shed a tear for PM Modi if not for Home Minister Amit Shah. This is an avowed Right-of-centre government. It needs the support of industry, which would then expect the government to look into its concerns in return.

So, why cannot the Modi government consult the labouring classes (their leaders, of course) when it frames laws that it asserts is for their (farmers, workers) benefit? It is good leadership to take them along by making them feel part of the decision-making process. In the farm reforms, the government very rightly felt that subsidies and waiver of farm loans needed to be given a decent burial. Why should the farmers object as long as their quality of life sees an improvement, which the government says will happen? Also, the fear that the corporate sector entering the agricultural markets will impoverish farmers and those dependent on agriculture needs to be addressed. It will be a little more difficult, but it is the degree of difficulty that finally tests the government’s mettle.

PM Modi, in an election speech delivered in West Bengal last week, deprecated the presence of some regular activists at every protest site, whether it was the anti-CAA/NRC protests, the JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia students’ protests, the anti-farm laws protests or any other. He insinuated that they were BJP baiters who were the first to target the government irrespective of the merits of its intentions or its actions. He also saw a “foreign hand” in these developments as Former PM Indira Gandhi was wont to allege. Or did he mean that the usual suspects engineered the criticism abroad and thereby let down the nation?


Also read: Modi govt has lost farm laws battle, now raising Sikh separatist bogey will be a grave error


Ignore Rihanna and Co.

I would advise PM Modi to ignore crooners like Rihanna and young environmental activists like Greta Thunberg and others who, as his government suggests, may have been approached by ‘anti-India’ elements to comment on matters that do not concern or even interest them. Rihanna, most probably, will not be able to pinpoint Punjab if a map of India was placed in front of her. But she has a million or more followers on Twitter and that must be what those who could have prompted her sought to take advantage of.

It would not be surprising if we learn tomorrow that opponents like the Sikhs for Justice, a brainchild of the Sikh-American New York-based lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, set up the Barbados-born singer. There is no need of losing any sleep over Rihanna’s tweets because any damage she has caused is already done and will soon be forgotten. Just make a resolution not to bypass parliamentary practices and procedures in future even if fast-paced implementation strengthens the image you seek to build. The downside to such haste is debilitating. It is best avoided for your own peace of mind.

Reaching out to respected cricketers, singers, movie stars and household names to counter the little damage done by Rihanna and others has only embarrassed two Bharat Ratna awardees and other stars. They would not want to get involved and at the same time, they could not say ‘No’ to demands made on behalf of such a strong leader. To top it all, your old collaborator, the Shiv Sena, in the important state of Maharashtra, has decided to investigate how the two Bharat Ratna awardees have issued identical statements to counter Rihanna.

The Modi-Shah government is in a Catch-22 situation of its own making. It is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The lesser evil now is to withdraw the three laws and sit down with Rakesh Tikait and other farm leaders to draft new laws, which are in any case necessary to modernise the farm sector in India.

The author is a retired IPS officer, former Mumbai Police commissioner and DGP, Gujarat and Punjab. Views are personal.