CONVERGENCE OF AGRARIAN DISCONTENT IN SOUTH ASIA

With protests becoming catalysts for anti-authoritarian struggle, the air is ripe for new visions of rural emancipation

- Hashim bin Rashid Amod Shah and Ahilan Kadirgamar

South Asia’s rural landscape has been profoundly reshaped by such ‘reforms’, dispossessing farmers of their land, and pushing them into wage labour and migration as coping mechanisms (pic AFP)

Those familiar with the systematic attack on agriculture in South Asia over the last decades will not be surprised at the ongoing farmers’ protests in India. It could have been Pakistan, where farmers protesting for support prices were beaten up and arrested in Lahore only a month ago, or Sri Lanka, where shortages of imported fertilizers and declining subsidies has led to farmers’ outcry. In the middle of a long simmering rural economic crisis pushed over the cliff by the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts by South Asian governments to project corporatisation and deregulation as the way forward for agriculture have angered long-suffering farmers.

Contempt for small-holding producers has been a part and parcel of policymaking across the region for decades. Successive governments have imposed a corporate agenda, seeking profits from food production and distribution by relaxing norms for cheap food imports, and encouraging export oriented production, price speculation, agribusiness and retail supermarkets. South Asia’s rural landscape has been profoundly reshaped by such ‘reforms’, dispossessing farmers of their land, and pushing them into wage labour and migration as coping mechanisms. This hollowing out of rural livelihoods does not come with any assurance of stable jobs or a decent quality of life in urban areas.

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