I’d like to start with an event which at first sight seems to have nothing to do with the farmers’ struggle, but I’ll explain how it does. After the countrywide lockdown was imposed in the last week of March 2020, life came to a standstill. But by April, there was a massive exodus of migrant workers from towns and cities thoughout India, tens of millions of them, trekking back hundreds of miles to their home villages, mostly on foot, a few on bicycles, a few catching lifts from trucks for part of the way. They encountered searing heat and brutal treatment from the police – beatings, being locked in stadiums converted into open-air prisons, sprayed with chlorine disinfectant – but still they persisted.
So who were these people, and why were they undertaking this journey in the midst of a lockdown? In fact, these were family members of some of the very same people participating in the farmers’ struggle: small and marginal farmers, and especially agricultural labourers. Unable to make a living in their villages, they’d migrated to towns and villages looking for work, and the only employment they’d been able to find was unregulated and extremely exploitative, often through labour contractors, and with absolutely no security. Some of them slept in their workplaces, others got together and rented a small room in a slum, packed together like sardines. When the lockdown was declared, employers suspended production and contractors vanished, often without even paying workers for the work they had already done. Living from hand to mouth with hardly any savings, what could they do? Those who lived at their place of work were booted out at once, those in rented accommodation soon followed. With public transport suspended, they decided to walk to their villages.
But hadn’t they left their villages precisely because they couldn’t make a living there? An interviewer asking this question got this answer: ‘If we’re going to die anyway, we’d rather die with our families at home.’