For the 1st time, the Modi Government faces a significant challenge. The Punjab farmers’ protest against the 3 farm reform legislations poses a Hobson’s option: Succumbing below stress will jeopardise extended overdue reforms but failure to obtain peace dangers violence and disruption at a time the economy is nonetheless to recover from a pandemic-induced slowdown. Finding itself trapped in a cul de sac, all points thought of, a negotiated climbdown at this juncture appears the only sensible course accessible. For, the longer the siege of the capital continues, the higher is the danger of the misdirected agitation snowballing into a substantially larger conflict.
Already, the truckers are threatening to join the stir. This may well disrupt vital supplies nation-wide. At present, 90 per cent of the farmers are from Punjab but farmers from other states will most likely really feel obliged to show solidarity must there be a prolonged stalemate. Admittedly, the Government faces a peculiar dilemma. Despite its great intentions to modernise the extended stagnant farm sector, to infuse private capital and modern day technologies for greater yields per acre and superior incomes for landowners, it finds itself stymied by vested interests. Of course, it can not escape blame for not engaging with the stakeholders ahead of pushing the reforms by way of Parliament.
Typically, the Modi Government’s repeated failure to broad-base selection-creating for a wider consensus on far-reaching legislations has resulted in the present imbroglio. It stands to drop face must it retreat below the threat of the determined, although completely misguided farmers, but losing the tiny battle and surviving to win the massive war right after required preparations is sensible, rather than aggravating the scenario and enabling the hardliners to dig in their heels.
Right now, the utmost priority must be to clear the highways top into the national capital. It can not be accomplished with no supplying the protesters a ‘victory’, even although they may harm their personal extended-term interests. Here, we can not enable but come back to the inherent failure of the government to involve these for whose sake it presumably acts unilaterally and lands itself in difficulty.
What may have been tolerable in Gujarat can not be replicated at the national level with no facing significant consequences. Yes, often bitter medicine requires to be administered against the wishes of a patient but in a democratic polity with several interests and a political opposition waiting in the wings to object and obstruct, no government can ramrod reforms with no advance homework. Punjab farmers in the grip of greedy ‘arthiyas’ who earn hefty commissions gratuitously from the obligatory procurement of wheat and paddy by the Food Corporation of India are a volatile lot.
Given that the two principal parties in the state, the ruling Congress and the opposing Akalis, are fiercely vying with every single other to be observed in help of the farmers, it is most effective to let the protesters go back feeling ‘victorious’. The siege of Delhi must not be permitted to develop into a larger chakka jam. The government must draw a lesson from this mishap: Never take the stakeholders for granted even if you imply nicely and want to do them great. Finally, try to remember, you can take a horse to water but it is really hard to make it drink.