It took 2 years, 4 protests & meticulous planning for farmers to be heard

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Maharashtra government finally gave written assurances Monday to placate discontented farmers who staged a long march to press for their demands.

However, the struggle to secure this assurance from Devendra Fadnavis’s government in black and white goes far beyond the six days of the 170-km long march from Nashik to Mumbai, which over 30,000 farmers completed on foot.

Behind the curtains is the story of a two-year long movement, largely under the CPI(M)-affiliated All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), gradually increasing the heat on the BJP-led government through four such protests, several meetings with ministers and state representatives, and meticulous planning.

Laying the ground

The first time that the AIKS tried to push the government to give in to its charter of demands through organised protests was in March 2016, when farmers in large numbers staged a two-day satyagraha at the main square of Nashik city, when the budget session of the legislature was underway.

Farmers ate and slept on the road for two days, until CM Fadnavis called a delegation to Vidhan Bhavan for talks. The CM mollified the protesting farmers’ leaders with assurances, but nothing was put down on paper and was eventually forgotten, AIKS leaders say.

Next, reiterating the demand of tribal farmers of getting lands that they have been tilling for years under their ownership, as per the Forest Rights Act, a second wave of protests was held at Wada taluka in the Palghar district. Protestors in thousands gheraoed the house of the state tribal development minister Vishnu Savra, resulting in the minister and his department inviting them for talks.

The next major protests were in June 2017, when several farmers’ groups and leaders joined hands to vociferously demand a farm loan waiver. Farmers deserted their fields and took to the streets, creating pressure on the supply of certain vegetables. The protests, which were sparked off at Puntamba, a village in the Ahmednagar district, spread within days to various parts of the state, culminating in the state government announcing a Rs 34,022-crore farm loan waiver scheme.

The protests were, however, marked with a number of disagreements within the steering committee of farmers’ leaders on their demands.

Ashok Dhawale, national president of the AIKS, told ThePrint: “Revenue minister Chandrakant Patil promised a complete farm loan waiver, but the 24 June government resolution that detailed the scheme had a number of conditions that immediately barred lakhs of farmers from seeking a loan waiver. Later, the entire process of implementation was also mismanaged.”

Eventually, the AIKS executive council decided to put together another show of strength in a meeting on 16 February, and the idea a long march was put forth.

Planning the march

The long march from Nashik to Mumbai, which grabbed national attention, was largely orchestrated by four senior AIKS leaders – Dhawale, state general secretary Ajit Nawale, state president Kisan Gujar, and MLA Jiva Pandu Gavit.

Besides, a core team of about 20 AIKS leaders worked on the ground to mobilise people, primarily from the Nashik, Thane, Palghar and Ahmednagar districts.

“We resolved that this time we will approach the protests with an absolute steely resolve of not backing down till we get an iron-cast assurance. It was decided that we will hold the long march after Holi in March, during the budget session of the state legislature, to have maximum impact,” Dhawale said.

The AIKS picked Nashik as a starting point because it has a large support base in the district, second only to Thane.

AIKS volunteers travelled the road between Nashik and Mumbai three times in vehicles to assess exactly how much distance the protestors will need to cover every day to reach south Mumbai, the city’s political power centre, on 12 March if they commence the journey on 6 March.

Dhawale said: “We wanted to ensure that protest march does not drag beyond six or seven days, as it would have otherwise run into danger of losing steam and so, though it is not easily possible to walk beyond 10-20 kilometres a day, we decided to cover at least 30 kilometres every day.”

Volunteers scouted for routes that will cause minimum disturbance to civic life, and marked open grounds and riverbanks along the way to set up pit-stops and overnight camps.

“We consciously decided that we did not want to resort to throwing normal life out of gear to get people to focus on our protest, and it earned us a lot of support and goodwill from people. Even in Mumbai, we kept the highways and main roads free, and used the service road to march on,” Dhawale said.

The protestors’ decision to walk to Azad Maidan overnight Sunday to avoid inconvenience to 10th and 12th standard students whose examinations are underway was much appreciated.

The AIKS appointed small groups of volunteers for every thousand protestors. These groups would zoom ahead to night camps and pit-stops in tempos, carrying rice and firewood, and keep warm food plates ready for the weary farmers.

Mobilising farmers

Mobilising people to join the protest was not very difficult, AIKS leaders say, as the long march was the fourth such protest in two years.

Nevertheless, a team of nine AIKS activists, including MLA Gavit, travelled around the Nashik district, informing people of the long march, the charter of demands, and the plan to not back down without a written assurance. The highest turnout for the march was eventually from the Nashik district, comprising a large number of tribal farmers.

Similarly, four activists went around gathering support in the districts of Thane and Palghar, while there were volunteers in charge of other districts such as Ahmednagar, Parbhani, Sangli and Solapur too.

While the protest was largely made up of farmers from the districts of Nashik, Thane, Palghar and Ahmednagar, a number of farmers from other districts too joined the march on the final two days and the numbers swelled.

The BJP government eventually held out an olive branch on 11 March, with minister Girish Mahajan meeting the protesting farmers in Mumbai, and inviting them for discussions the following day.

Source: It took 2 years, 4 protests & meticulous planning for farmers to be heard