Modi to Repeal India Farm Laws Following Protests

NEW DELHI – Narendra Modi has dominated politics in India for seven years. With broad public support and large majorities in parliament, the prime minister has implemented dramatic and sometimes harmful policies. His government has been vehemently advocating a Hindu nationalist agenda and using increasingly persistent tactics to silence critics without effective opposition.

On Friday, with a rare retreat, Mr. Modi suddenly doesn’t look quite as dominant anymore.

Mr Modi said his government will repeal three agricultural laws aimed at repairing the country’s ailing agricultural sector, in a surprising concession to years of protests by farmers who feared the revisions would ruin their livelihoods.

The government, he said in a televised address, “will initiate the process in the parliamentary session that begins this month. I urge the protesting farmers to return home to their families and let’s start over. “

Mr. Modi has timed his announcement for Guru Nanak Jayanti, a holiday celebrated by the Sikhs, alluding to the Indian Sikh minority who form the basis of the protest.

“Today I ask forgiveness from my compatriots and say with a pure heart and honest mind that there may have been a shortcoming,” he said.

The speech baffled the Indians, who were used to Modi’s usual demeanor as a muscular leader, impervious to criticism. However, it signaled that its reputation had been weakened due to a variety of issues, including a catastrophic response to a second wave of the coronavirus and a battered economy.

“Modi’s image as a tough, no-nonsense prime minister has suffered a major dent,” said Yashwant Sinha, a former finance minister who left Modi’s party in 2018.

Mr Modi himself remains popular, according to some polls, and the disorganized opposition makes it very unlikely that he will lose his power.

However, in May, his party, Bharatiya Janata, suffered a decisive loss in elections it believed could be won in West Bengal state. Polls show that the leadership of the BJP is weakened in Uttar Pradesh – a state that is seen as a frontrunner in national voting and will hold elections early next year.

Part of this weakening could be due to the peasant protests. After more than a dozen unsuccessful rounds of negotiations, farmers changed tactics this fall and shadowed high-ranking officials in Mr Modi’s government as they campaigned in Uttar Pradesh and across northern India.

During one such confrontation in October, a BJP convoy rammed a group of protesting farmers, killing four protesters and four other people, including a local journalist. The son of a minister belonging to Mr Modi is under investigation in connection with the incident.

Since then, Akhilesh Yadav, an opposition politician and former prime minister of Uttar Pradesh, has held huge election rallies that worried the incumbent BJP leadership there.

“The BJP of the rich wanted to deceive the poor and farmers with land acquisition and these black laws,” Yadav said in a tweet on Friday.

Mr Modi’s withdrawal could give India’s democracy a chance, said Gilles Verniers, professor of political science at Ashoka University. With the opposition split and populist Mr Modi widely supported, his government has put pressure on political opponents and sought to suppress criticism online and in the news media, making the government less responsive.

“It shows that even if the government repeals these laws for electoral reasons, elections still function as a formal mechanism to keep governments in check,” Verniers said. “It also shows that more substantial aspects of democratic participation such as citizen protests can be successful.”

He added, “This is good news for India’s ailing democracy.”

Mr Modi and the BJP have come under pressure in the past but have mostly been able to resist it. In 2015, during his last major retreat, the government abandoned plans to revise the sale of farmland in the face of the protests.

A year later, the government held onto its guns after small businesses were slammed by Mr. Modi’s sudden move to scrap old paper money. And in 2019, despite nationwide marches, it stood up to a law that gave foreigners of all major religions in South Asia except Islam a quick route to citizenship.

But the party has stumbled lately, especially painfully in a country with an emerging population and a dream of competing economically on the world stage.

The Indian economy suffered a major blow after Mr Modi suddenly locked the country nationwide in March 2020 to fight the coronavirus. The government became complacent after that first wave ended, resulting in a devastating second wave that filled hospitals and crematoriums.

Mr Modi’s government has since bounced back with a stepped-up vaccination program, but the outbreak left countless deaths and millions of households threatened with sliding out of the middle class.

With this in mind, Mr. Modi became increasingly vulnerable to the protesting farmers – a group that proved resilient and well organized.

Economists largely agree that India’s agricultural sector needs an overhaul. The farms grow some crops so excessively that they rot in silos or are exported, while people elsewhere in India suffer from malnutrition.

Mr. Modi’s government had argued that the new laws would bring private investment into a sector that still over 60 percent of the population depend on for a living. But the farmers, who were already struggling with high debt burdens and bankruptcies, feared that reduced government regulations would turn them over to the corporate giants. Their suspicions grew after the BJP quickly passed the laws last year.

For more than a year, protesting farmers have been camping in tents outside New Delhi and disrupting traffic. While Mr. Modi watched a military parade in town in January to commemorate a national holiday, farmers drove tractors through police barriers, killing one farmer and injuring others.

The peasants rejected any compromise that was only a suspension. They stayed in their tents during last year’s harsh winter, summer heat and the second wave of Covid-19 that wreaked havoc in New Delhi. Their campsites resembled small townships with communal kitchens, laundries, and even gyms and volunteer masseuses.

Until Friday, Mr. Modi and his supporters were steadfast and labeled the farmers as secessionists and pawns in the service of the opposition parties and did not know how the agrarian reforms would benefit them.

“The government had to eat humble cake,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Narendra Singh Tomar, India’s Agriculture Minister, was still defending the laws on Friday, saying that Mr. Modi had a “clean intention” to revolutionize agriculture. “I am sad that we have not been able to convince some of the country’s farmers of the benefits of these laws,” he said.

The protest leaders greeted Mr. Modi’s turnaround on Friday with cautious optimism and planned to meet at the main protest location in New Delhi to discuss next steps.

Ramandeep Singh Mann, a peasant leader and activist, said he was “ecstatic” after hearing the news. “As if you had conquered Mount Everest!” He said.

It is unclear, said Mann, whether the government will agree to the farmers’ other major demand: a separate law that guarantees a minimum price for crops. Mr Tomar said the government would set up a committee to look into the matter.

For now, Mr Mann said, the peasants would continue their siege outside the borders of New Delhi until Parliament formally repealed the three laws.

“We’ll be there by that day,” he said.

In Ghazipur, another place of protest on the outskirts of the capital, the celebrations were muted. Some farmers shot off fireworks, others handed out sweets. The communal kitchens, which have been feeding demonstrators uninterruptedly for more than a year, served the usual rice, bread and chickpea curry.

“There is no trust, no trust in this government,” said Om Pal Singh Malik, a protest leader at the Ghazipur site. “If he’s been honest, why doesn’t he call the parliamentary session now as an emergency?”

Jagdeep Singh, whose father Nakshatra Singh, 54, was among the protesters killed in Uttar Pradesh last month, said the lifting is testimony to those who died in the difficult conditions of a year of protests – be through extreme temperatures, heart attacks, Covid-19 or more. According to a farm manager, around 750 protesters died. (The government said they had no data on this.)

“This is a win for all those farmers who gave their lives to save hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in this country from corporate greed,” said Mr Singh. “You have to smile wherever you are.”

Mujib Mashal contributed to the coverage.