As the old year was giving way to the new, in this age of image, two videos were telling a story. In a first, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, delivering an election speech in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad, encourages his audience to vote for his party’s “nizam (ruling order)” over what he says is his rival. Is different. He explains the difference: in SP’s Nizam, N for Naseemuddin, I for Imran Masood… In other words, for all BJPPropaganda and claim of governance, its senior leaders and ministers once again seem to be making the same bare and poor alternative in UP 2022 – us vs them, one religion vs another. The feeling that the BJP is preparing to run a joyless, dominant campaign, weighed down by resentment, is a depressing thing to carry into the new year. Now, cut to the second video. Women in a house in Tumakuru, walled with balloons, are eloquent and forcefully telling some men, Hindutva defenders, who were apparently trying to disrupt their Christmas celebrations. You don’t need to know the language that women speak to understand what women say. The brave women of Tumakuru who denied bullying, not politicians, in a polarizing campaign are the apt freeze-frame on which to end the year with farmers talking to their government.
Last year the farmers agitated and won. In November 2020, protesting farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, but also from elsewhere, had reached Delhi’s borders to set up open camps against the Centre’s three agricultural laws amid a pandemic. In November 2021 when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi When it eventually took to television to announce his government’s decision to repeal the laws, it became clear that the issue was not his merit – he was reformist in intent, and by all accounts and indices, Punjab’s agrarian transformation. Screaming for The point was that the farmers had tightened their backs and the government could not ignore their insecurities and concerns. For more than a year, the peasants had shown the power of peaceful resistance – the movement was badly scorched by violence on January 26, but for the most part, it remained patient and adamant. Its journey and its cults make democracy prosperous.
Of course, 2021 was also the year of other stories. In that second deadly Covid surge in April-May, the horrific loss to so many people left behind by a rudderless government and unprepared administration. And, by the end of the year, the tremendous and impressive success of the immunization programme, which is now expected to support India for a possible third wave of the mutated virus with the largest population of vaccinated people in the world. Under challenge are multiple snapshots of institutional norms, the weaponization of laws against free speech, and the opposition’s inability to prevent the end of the debate. Yet, amidst the challenges and the ongoing pandemic, there is a hope for 2022 that comes from the unblemished spirit of farmers and women: the people will speak and the powerful will be forced to listen. happy New Year.
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