A brute majority doesn’t win the day, pressure tactics do

By Shikha Mukerjee

A brute majority in the Lok Sabha is a technical qualification that permits a single political party and if it has allies, then a coalition, to form a government and enact laws, pass budgets and govern in the name of the people. It does not, however, give any regime the power to claim that it represents all the people. Nor does it qualify the regime to assume that organisations that represent sections of interests are any less representative or powerful in a democracy.

The almost year-long (short of 365 by a few days) protest movement by about 500 organisations representing the interests of farmers of all sizes, under the banner of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, has proved the Narendra Modi regime, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sangh Parivar with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at the apex wrong in its belief that its 303 seats out of 542 seats in the Lok Sabha gave it the power to railroad the opposition inside and outside of Parliament. The refusal of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha to call off the protest movement even though a promise was made by the Prime Minister that the laws would be repealed in the forthcoming session of Parliament is incontrovertible evidence that India’s farmers distrust the present government at the Centre.

The distrust is the product of the arrogance of the BJP and its government that it could legislate for India’s farm sector, comprising big, middle and small peasant landowners and landless agricultural labour, without engaging in a consultative process, that is fundamental to the idea of democracy, where representation and participation are essential to an agreed choice or solution to a specific set of long standing problems. Such distrust of the government is seriously destructive of the underlying contract between the people and a duly elected government that is at the heart of modern parliamentary democracy.

The participation of 500 farm organisations, each one different in its own way, in a movement that has remained united despite the attempts by the BJP and the Modi government to discredit its legitimacy is an extraordinary demonstration of the strength of democracy in action. The ability of the leadership to resolve issues through discussion and arrive at a consensus has challenged the fundamentally autocratic character of the Modi government that used its parliamentary majority to claim legitimacy for its legislations on the farm sector.

The farmers’ movement is a confrontation between participatory democracy and the legitimacy and credibility of a collective leadership to represent people even outside parliament and an autocracy that claims legitimacy as a democratically elected government representing the majority. It took the Modi government and BJP time to recognise the political challenge it faced in its reckless opposition to the farmers movement.

By announcing the repeal of the three farm laws, just ahead of the crucial state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand early next year, the BJP is hoping to retrieve the political ground it has lost. It is a gamble, because it may be too little because it is certainly too late. In the one year that thousands of farmers have lived out in the open, in blistering heat, numbing cold, through downpours that flooded their makeshift shelters, barricades with spikes, snapped electricity and water connections, suspended internet and mobile connectivity, over 700 hundred of the protestors have died, more have fallen ill and yet they did not retreat.

Prime Minister Modi’s speech on November 19, timed to coincide with Guru Nanak’s birthday, was an attempt to cut the political loss that the BJP fears it has accumulated as a result of its brutal opposition to a legitimate movement. The SKM’s decision to go ahead with its schedule of nationwide protest rallies designed to reach out to hundreds of thousands of people to explain to them the reasons for the yearlong faceoff and its continuance establishes the point  the Modi government’s promise to repeal the three black farm laws is not to be trusted, because new laws have to be made and the new laws must reflect and address the problems of the farm sector and offer solutions that benefit farmers.

The first post Modi promise rally or rather Mahapanchayat of farmer organisations in Lucknow on November 22, politically challenges the BJP. Samyukta Kisan Morchas’s call of No Vote to BJP does not prescribe a specific choice; it does prescribe a negative vote, against the BJP in the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh elections. The call is expected to have a ripple effect on the other states where elections are due next year.

The next rally in Mumbai, followed by the march to Parliament is SKM’s method of keeping the Modi government under pressure to act in good faith. In an intervi