India Farmers Mass Near Capital to Push for Government Deal

Pratik Parija and Swati Gupta
·4 min read
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Tens of thousands of farmers pressing for guaranteed crop prices and debt relief camped en route to the Indian capital on Friday, waiting for weekend negotiations with government officials.

The expression of discontent widened as more farm groups and trade unions began a one-day national strike Friday in solidarity with the group’s demands. Reminiscent of massive protests in 2020 and 2021 that paralyzed the capital, the farmers’ march comes months before a national election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek a third term in power.

Talks on Thursday night with the government didn’t end the dispute, but ANI reported further discussions are scheduled for Sunday. Farmer leaders speaking after the meeting said both sides had agreed to continue peacefully as they work toward a solution on the farmers’ demands.

“The agitation will continue and it will do so peacefully,” farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal told reporters. “There will be no provocation from our side or the government.”

Confident in its wider political support and loathe to pay the cost of the wide-ranging support demanded by farmers, the government is unlikely to back down. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party expanded its control in state elections in December, the opposition alliance is teetering and Modi’s popularity among his majority Hindu base is high.

Still, the protest is an uncomfortable demonstration of anger in a country where even after decades of urban growth, most voters live in rural areas.

Read more: India’s government holds ground against farmers as strike looms.

Farmers began massing from the northern states of Punjab and Haryana at the start of the week, gathering a fleet of more than 20,000 tractors. Their destination is an 18th-century observatory called Jantar Mantar, a traditional Delhi protest point.

To stop their advance, police have set up metal barriers and barbed wire, and authorities have already used teargas and water cannons to scatter protesters en route.

India’s farming industry has, in the past half-century, turned into one of the world’s key providers of staples like rice. But the sector is still made up of millions of smallholder farmers, whose yields and incomes have lagged. Half lack basic equipment and access to traditional financing sources, McKinsey estimates. Climate change is making a bad situation worse, exacerbating long-standing issues like debt.

Read more: Why India’s farmers are marching on Delhi again: QuickTake.

Farmers argue that price guarantees would ease cost pressures, boost their incomes and economic growth. Opponents, however, say the result would be a heavy burden for the government and higher prices for consumers, already struggling. Food inflation, which accounts for about half of India’s consumer-price basket, climbed to almost 10% in December.

Expanding minimum selling prices would also fall short of some of the deeper structural changes necessary to modernize India’s agricultural sector and provide little incentive to improve farming or financial innovation.

Indian farmers ended lengthy protests in 2021 after Modi’s government agreed to their demands including setting up a panel to consider guaranteed crop prices across the country. But there has been no decision.

The government already sets price floors for more than two dozen crops, although private buyers don’t have to pay them. They are mainly used by the state to buy wheat and rice for welfare programs.

Workers from state-run companies including Coal India, NMDC Ltd. and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. joined the one-day agitation, according to a joint statement by trade unions and other industry associations on Friday. Trade unions and farm groups had said last month that they would intensify their struggle until their demands including assured crop prices are met.

“We joined the strike to protest against the central government’s policies against the working class,” said D.D. Ramanandan, a secretary at Centre of Indian Trade Unions. About half of Coal India workers participated in the strike, he said.

--With assistance from Rajesh Kumar Singh and Shruti Srivastava.

(Updates to add details of Friday’s strike in penultimate and last graphs)

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