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Guest Column | Punjabi farmer: Robin Hood in tattered clothes
The government can defeat the farmers but this victory will come at nation’s cost because in defeating the farmers, the nation will only be defeating 70% of itself
Is the Indian, especially the Punjabi farmer, trapped in a fake poetic balloon which has deprived him of his prosaic but essential right to flourish like his brethren in other professions? How do social media savants, anchors and singers hailing him as a self-sacrificing and angelic breadwinner --- annadata, life-preserver etc --- help him in seeking the fulfilment of his perfectly normal and reasonable demands about the needs, the comforts and even the luxuries of life?
Strangely, he is painted in sharply contradictory colours - as a “fascinating and adorable” object of “sympathy” and even pity on the one hand and a romantic Robin Hood rescuing a trapped maiden - humanity - from the demons of hunger and starvation, on the other. Neither of the two images truthfully depicts a farmer’s real identity. He has been falling victim to demonisation on the one hand and deification on the other.
Has he too contributed to his becoming a paranoid prisoner of bravado and victimhood at the same time- in love with his identity as a ‘Robin Hood in tattered clothes’? Sometimes, yes.
But often, it’s his “friends, philosophers and guides” who have led him into the trap and then disappeared after reports of ‘suspicious’ deals.
He must come out and declare that he is neither proud nor meek but just an ordinary human being, with empty stomachs to feed back home, a character with real needs, real demands, real strengths and weaknesses, real virtues and vices –like “us”. And he has a right to be like this.
Overshadowed by politics
Strangely, too, the economy of the farmers’ case has been overshadowed by politics and ideology around it. Consequently, one of the most credible cases of the common man’s hero is getting lost in political and ideological translation. So, the blinding colours of his aura contradict the actual grey of his day-to-day reality. Has the unwritten “special status” to farmers done more harm than good to their cause, getting them envy without any matching benefits? Farmers must ponder these questions. Can this be corrected?
Yes. For this, a farmer must start by declaring his pooran azadi from the image-traps he appears stuck in. He is neither a demon nor a demigod nor a sympathy seeker. He is a normal human with real normal needs and ambitions and real desires, real virtues and real vices – like you and me, and no different from a cobbler, a farm labourer, a rickshaw puller, a university professor, a clerk, a shopkeeper etc. And he is seeking no favours – just his due share in the sheaf of sunshine. Why grudge him his tractor when those with smaller assets move around him in multiple luxury sedans?
Understanding the predicament
We have a responsibility here. Instead of blaming him every time our child is unable to catch a bus to school, we need to walk the extra mile to understand the farmer’s deep predicament. We must never be blind and fail to see that our own relevance and worth as drivers of humanity’s march into a healthy future is dependent entirely on the farmers’ ability and success in freeing us from the worries of our survival.
Every segment of society is integral to it – farmers included but no one excluded. Amateur and professional narrative builders have often flattered the farmer into euphoric exultation over his real slot in the economic system. But they have also encouraged a self-perpetuating victimhood in him, so uncharacteristic of the robust farmers of Punjab. This inner contradiction has been a recipe for disaster.
Moving forward, as a first step, poetry and its fake sheen must be taken off our beloved farmer and his profession - at least for now. Replace this romantic dressage with unromantic but useful attires of micro and macro economics.
This translates into acceptance of a simple fact – that the farmer and his profession operate as a part of a socio-economic engine. This simply means operationalising cross-sector economic synergy. Right now, agriculture, services, trade and industry appear oblivious of one another’s presence and operational dynamics – at times even hostile to one another. If this is the plight of our economic jet liner, then the flight and everyone on it, including the farmers, are headed for a crash.
Friend or foe: Knowing the difference is key
Some narrative engineers, portal poets and hired romantics have blurred the farmers’ normal uncanny ability to differentiate between friend and foe, and between ‘distinction’ and discrimination. This is the contribution not only of vested bodies but also of thinkers, songsters and performers who pitch in where they see a gathering. Often, the victim is left holding the baby as professional mourners move to better cheering crowds. After the crowds and cheer leaders have departed, a farmer is left standing - a lonely, deeply worried figure with children at home to feed and educate and no one to help him in that.
Further, a farmer must be un-trapped by idealistic fuzz which others stir around him. He has a right to be frank about his worldly desires and worldly ambitions. There is no sin in his earning big profits and behave like an agriculturist Ambani. Why not? But for this, he needs first to set his own house in order. Right on the hour, it’s a mess.
And lastly, as a farmer’s son and a practising farmer in my youth, I often saw that a farmer is betrayed by his ideological suitors and exploited by his market enemies. Both – his suitor and his enemy --- often appear suspiciously together in a conspiracy of fake hostility. The farmer must now be smart and “use” the suitor and the enemy – rather than being used by both.
This can happen only when he himself realises that his real issue is neither political nor ideological. It is economic. And he has a right to demand his due share in an economy of which he is a foundational component.
And governments and the system, including the corporate world, must realise that no country, no society can afford a victory at the cost of its citizens’- read farmers’ - pride. The government can defeat the farmers but this victory will come at nation’s cost because in defeating the farmers, the nation will only be defeating 70% of itself. It will be like the head of a body feeling proud to pluck the heart out of its own host body. The reverse is also true and one hopes the farmers are mindful of that.
The author is a freelance journalist
