Many San Jose State and Bay Area community members continue to support farmers in India who’ve been protesting since three contentious agricultural laws passed in September 2020 pertaining to the “mandi system.”
Amar Singh, Bay Area Kisaan Movement co-founder, said the mandi system is a market for farmers to sell their crops.
As “Kisaan” stands for farmers in Punjabi, Singh said the group has been organizing local protests in support of repealing India’s recent agricultural laws for more than a year.
“With these new laws that went into place, the [minimum support price] was taken away in the mandi system. When the farmers go there to sell their crop, they're going to be at the mercy of these big corporations that can literally put any price on anything,” Singh said. “These laws also take away the governance.”
The minimum support price is the lowest price farmers are guaranteed for their produce, according to a Feb. 3 Juggernaut article.
The Juggernaut is a media company that reports on South Asia, which consists of countries in the Indian subcontinent, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, according to its website.
India’s recent farm laws eliminate the minimum support price and will mostly apply to Punjab and Haryana states, according to the Juggernaut article.
Farmers from Punjab and Haryana, the last two states under the mandi system, were wealthier than those from other states according to the same Juggernaut article.
The agricultural laws were developed under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to bring all states under similar market laws, according to the same article.
These laws abolish the mandi system, which all other states except Punjab and Haryana had already removed, according to the same article.
The biggest rally within the months-long demonstrations throughout India was on Sept. 5 with hundreds of thousands of farmers in the streets of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, a predominantly agricultural state, according to a Sept. 5 Reuters article.
Farmers from Punjab and Haryana states are concerned about the effects removing the minimum support price will have on them, especially because they’ve seen the way other states have been changed by a free market, according to the Juggernaut article.
When the mandi system was removed in Bihar there was a dramatic fall in crop prices as farmers were left to bargain against large private retailers and food processors, according to the same article.
Farm laws’ effects
Political science associate professor Karthika Sasikumar said any disruption to India’s food supply will affect the rest of the world because of its large population and food export.
“India has the second-largest population in the world so any sort of disruption to the food available to Indians [has a] worldwide impact on hunger,” Sasikumar said. “Anyone who cares about hunger as a global issue [should] be concerned about the food supply in India because it is so large.”
India makes up about 18% of the world’s population, according to Worldometer, a world statistics provider.
About 60% of the Indian labor force relies on agriculture, which accounts for about 15% to the country’s $2.7 trillion economy, according to a Nov. 30, 2020 New York Times article.
“Anything that you're eating or you're wearing, where do you think it is coming from?” Singh said. “A lot of these things are coming from [India] so everything comes back full circle.”
Indian farmers grew $128 million worth of vegetables that were exported to the U.S. in March 2021, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a data visualization platform.
India is also the third largest wheat producer in the world and Punjab alone provides about 17% of that wheat, according to a March 5 article by Statista, a platform that provides people with market and consumer data.
Political science freshman Amrit Gill said the Sikhism religion is deeply intertwined with agriculture.
“What most of our community does in Punjab is farming so to take that away from a community and put a company's rule over it is like taking your entire livelihood away from you,” Gill said. “In a sense, it's like taking away a person's land, a person's homeland.”
Sikhism is a religion founded in Punjab by Guru Nanak Ji about 500 years ago, according to a BBC article.
Guru Nanak emphasized a single divine force that united people from different backgrounds, according to an Aug. 9, 2018 article by The Conversation, an independent news outlet.
About 60% of Punjab’s population follows Sikhism, according to an article by World Population Review, a platform that provides readers with accessible data on world statistics.
There are about 500,000 Sikhs living in the U.S. and California has the third largest concentration of Sikh residents, according to a Dec. 2016 informational graphic by the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group based in the U.S.
“Our founding guru Guru Nanak Ji emphasized farming essentially. Everything goes back to agriculture,” Singh said.
Protest movement
Gill said she has attended protests and held educational events to show solidarity with farmers in India.
“There have been multiple protests. We had a really big one up in [San Francisco] that shut down the [Bay Bridge] and that got us a lot of publicity,” Gill said. “There [are] also weekly protests in front of the [San Francisco] Indian Embassy just to show solidarity with the farmers.”
Hundreds of local advocates demonstrated on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Dec. 5 last year in support of the farmers, according to a Dec. 5 Mercury News article.
Singh said even though the Bay Area Kisaan Movement has been organizing monthly protests and demonstrations, it’s crucial for more residents to get involved.
“It's on us to talk about [the protests] and raise awareness,” Singh said. “The struggle is getting everyone to come together.”
Singh said he wishes a more diverse group of people came out to the protests in the Bay Area instead of just Punjabi-Americans.
Gill shared Singh’s sentiment, adding “We need international solidarity. I think it is very important in the overall fight for our community back home.”
International solidarity became stronger when Rihanna, a singer, actress and fashion designer who has about 103 million Twitter followers, linked a Feb. 3 CNN article regarding India’s farmer protests in a February Twitter post and asked, “Why aren’t we talking about this ?!” according to a Feb. 4 NBC News article.
After Rihanna’s post many other celebrities including Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg followed suit and spoke out in solidarity with the protesters, according to the NBC News article.
“Americans don't really care about an issue until people they look up to speak up about it,” Gill said regarding Rihanna’s post. “If you try to educate the American community about issues they'll probably agree just [to save face].”
Advocacy momentum
India’s protests have continued to escalate with demonstrations and protest camps occurring throughout the country, according to an Oct. 4 New York Times article.
The government has responded with drastic measures including violence and internet outages, according to the New York Times article.
Both Singh and Gill agreed it’s hard to keep the movement’s momentum, especially because it’s been more than a year since the farmers began protesting.
“The farmers are serious about this, they're not just going to let the government come in and literally push them around. Their voice was not heard before the laws went into place, their voice [is] not being heard right now while [they’ve] been protesting for the past year,” Singh said.
Singh said despite the challenges, the unity of first generation young people fighting for their grandparents in India is amazing.
He said he’s also inspired by elder farmers protesting in India.
“[I am just] putting myself in [the farmers’] shoes and thinking how fortunate we are and then using that as energy to keep going forward and keep talking about it and raising awareness because [the farmers are] the real protesters,” Singh said.
Singh said it’s important to educate surrounding people on what’s happening to farmers in India.
He said while some may believe those in other countries shouldn’t speak on the situation, it’s at least those of Sikh diaspora that have a duty to take action.
“The land is in our blood. The land is our right,” Singh said. “[So we must be] true to where we come from and being a voice for our people.”
