Cover Feature

The arrest of Disha Ravi, a 21-year-old activist working for environmental and social justice, is evidence that the Modi regime has all but thrown away democratic pretences and has openly embraced authoritarianism. Disha and other young women are the victims of a Delhi Police witch-hunt because they sought to mobilise domestic and international opinion in favour of India’s farmers protesting Modi’s three pro-corporate farm laws.

What Is A Toolkit?

A protest “toolkit” is a set of materials a) explaining the key issue succinctly and addressing doubts and misinformation; b) suggesting what an individual person can do to support the cause; c) suggesting reading materials; d) offering drafts for letters to authorities asking them to support the cause or heed the demands of the protest; e) suggesting hashtags and so on for social media campaigns.      

The Article-14 portal maintains a database on the sedition law for the last decade. Its analysis of the data is revealing. It found:

65% of nearly 11,000 individuals in 816 sedition cases since 2010 were implicated after 2014 when Modi took office. Among those charged with sedition: opposition politicians, students, journalists, authors and academics.

22 January was the 4th day of the 'We the People of Patna with Farmers' campaign organized under the banner if AIPF Patna. A orogram in support of the ongoing farmers' struggle against the 3 black farm laws was held at the Kankarbagh Sabji Mandi in Patna attended by a large number of members of civil society.

(Afshan Jabeen, AIPWA activist who along with several other AIPWA comrades from Bihar spent a week at Delhi’s borders with the farmers, writes about her impressions of the movement.)

How is it possible that after the world attained an overall surplus in food production in most of the food-producing countries, worldwide hunger and malnutrition have also increased to a much greater extent? The answer lies in the logic of capitalism, which is the logic of greed and profit.

The Chief Justice of India had asked why women had been “kept” in the farmers’ protests at the border, and had sought reassurances from farmers’ legal representatives that women would be sent back home and kept out of the protests. He had even said he would personally take the “risk” of appealing to women to return home.

Throughout the extraordinarily cold night of 25 January, farmers at the protest sites at the Singhu, Tikri, and Gazipur borders remained awake till late in the night decorating their tractors and trolleys and planning and preparing for the parade.

The Modi regime which said it would never blink on the farm laws, has not only blinked, but bent, offering first to amend and then to “suspend” the laws, in desperate attempts to save the laws from outright repeal. But the farmers, who continue to camp at Delhi’s borders in the bitter winter cold, braving thunderstorms and rain showers, have told the Government that nothing short of an outright repeal of the Three Anti-Farmer Laws is acceptable to them.