Farm Unions Muddy Wrestling Match

The chaotic scenes witnessed at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Monday were not unanticipated. Last Thursday wrestler Bajrang Punia had asked farmers to reach the site with their tractors and trolleys to buttress the number of protesting wrestlers at the site. His message was broadcast through various media and by the week-end farmers from Punjab began moving towards the national capital. It was a recall of the anarchy seen on the outskirts of the capital in 2021. This time it was in the heart of India’s capital.

With his exhortation last week, Punia effectively turned a wrestlers’ protest into a protest with political hues. He proved the critics right who said the protest was just a ruse for something bigger. The wrestlers have gathered at Jantar Mantar to protest against the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) boss Brij Bhushan Saran Singh who was allegedly involved in sexual harassment. The case is now being investigated by the Delhi Police after the intervention of the Supreme Court. The wrestlers’ were not satisfied even with that level of judicial intervention: they demanded a “court-monitored” investigation, something the apex court turned down. The court, however, said that in case of any issue, the wrestlers’ could approach a magistrate’s court or the High Court. This keeps the possibility of further judicial intervention alive. But that has not satisfied the wrestlers who want Singh to be arrested immediately and strip him off his position at WFI.

Clearly, the wrestlers have no intention of allowing the legal process to take its course and want to press their point politically. In this, they have a ready ally in farmers’ from Punjab that are led by unions who are always itching for a “protest.”

Seen from a certain vantage, the wrestlers and the farmers are of the same ilk: people who are unwilling to follow processes and believe that by the sheer strength of numbers massed at a particular time and place they can circumvent anything—be it a legal process or established laws—to get anything they demand. This is not democracy in action but an anarchic coalition. It creates an acute moral hazard for the government. This was proven right when the farmers’ forced the government’s hand and the three farm reform laws were withdrawn in November 2021. At that time, it was hoped that would pacify farmers and they would go back to their routine lives. That did not happen. Since then, farmers in Punjab have been on the warpath without a break. Routine roadblocks, “protests” on flimsy grounds and, in general, anarchic behaviour, have now been “normalised” in Punjab. These farmers, oblivious of any economic reality, demand the highest prices for what they produce and the lowest input costs for what they use. This is impossible in any economy. But that hardly matters: in their view they can get anything by amassing a mob that is sufficiently large.

This logic is now being extended to the wrestlers’ protest. Not everyone can be a wrestler and hence those numbers will remain small. But wrestlers, who belong to the same caste group in general as the farmers, can always ask the latter to buttress their numbers. That is what is panning out at Jantar Mantar. This is not a protest anymore. It is a political challenge to the government and authority.

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Siddharth Singh

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