Notes from the Understorey

Farmers are fighting in India. It’s been ten months since the current BJP government fast-tracked three new bills to change the regulatory environment of India’s agricultural markets by opening it up to private players. The government’s position was that this would give farmers more freedom of choice to connect directly with non-traditional private suppliers. However, many of India’s farmers felt that this was just another step in this government’s agenda to corporatize the country and that it paved room for big businesses to dictate the price of their products, at the expense of their incomes and livelihoods.   And so, from all across villages and towns in India, they began their long march to Delhi. At the peak of the movement in December and January 2020, our nation’s capital barricaded itself with wires and spikes, physically separating itself from its citizen’s calls of distress with the threat of pain. There were (and continues to be) violent acts of police brutality, an...