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Examining Protest Fatigue Worldwide And Its Lens On Farmer Protests 2.0

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Protest Fatigue is when people are tired of protests on moral grounds of the protest or lack of financial benefits. Moral ground commonly becomes a concern when the protests are orchestrated by external entities and propaganda and the protester feels a void and lack of energy in himself to protest.

In this article, we will try to discuss the concept of protest fatigue and how it is evident in the farmer protests happening in the northern part of our country in 2024. The first part of the article discusses protest fatigue around the world and the second part, we will discuss the farmer protests through the lens of fatigue.

Protest Fatigue

Here is a list of protests from across the world:

In 2022 in the US, the National Policing Institute came up with a set of guidelines for managing communal riots, that they framed as Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which works under the guideline that some mass demonstrations are specifically planned with the intent of wreaking havoc and causing harm. 

Violent acts during demonstrations, also commonly understood as riots, are not protected by the freedom of speech of a nation. This applies to the US Constitution’s first amendment and also to the Indian Constitution’s preamble.

Farmer Protest 2.0

With the “Protest Fatigue” stories from around the world, let’s look at the Farmer protest version 2.0 that’s happening in Delhi.

In the earlier protests in 2020, almost all the farmer organizations in Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh, numbering more than 40, had come under the Sanyukt Kisa Morcha (SKM). 

This time a breakaway faction of that umbrella body is spearheading the protests. It’s called Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political) and excludes major farmer leaders and Kisan Mazdoor Morcha. This itself is an example proving the protest fatigue theory. Real farmers have to work. This is the sowing season and the seasons will not wait for protests to end. So the majority of farmers decide to withdraw. The cautious stance by some of the SKM leaders who have chosen to stay back indicates deep factionalism within farmer bodies.

The Seven Member Committee of SKM gives us some background on the protests.

Overall we see that other than 4-5 faces from 2020 rest didn’t even show up the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha is a new faction playing with SKM and we have to see the gravity of the elements involved in them. This time we see lesser enthusiasm shown by Khaps, the Jat community organizations that had massively mobilized during earlier protests. 

In Haryana and Punjab, internet services have to be disrupted to curtail the riots that are happening, and that has put thousands of people’s lives and lives in jeopardy. 

Despite the MSP being higher than global prices for wheat and rice, farmers often express dissatisfaction, advocating for higher MSP rates to improve their income prospects.

In India, agriculture contributes to 17% of the economy and 58% of the population is dependent on agriculture. That means roughly 70 crore people are dependent on agriculture and the number of people protesting is less than 0.005% of agriculturists who are particularly motivated by a specific section of ideology/ propaganda.

The late MS Swaminathan, a renowned agriculturist and the Father of the Green Revolution in the country, who was recently conferred the Bharat Ratna, chaired the National Commission on Farmers. The policy included asset reforms with respect to various natural resources, supply of good quality seeds, timely & adequate reach of institutional credit, coverage of farmers under a comprehensive national social security scheme, and effective implementation of MSP, among others. 

It may be noted that this recommendation was not included by the UPA government in the National Policy for Farmers which was finalized in 2007, and a lot of that including the Kisan credit card, direct subsidy, and crop insurance were all introduced during the NDA government after 2014. 

Soundar is a geopolitical enthusiast, based out of Ireland. His areas of interest include cyber, technology and its role in geopolitics.

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