The 2020–2021 farmers’ struggle in India: a post-Marxist detonation?

India has been witnessing a continuous wave of popular people’s movements against the policies brought forward by the ruling right-wing central government led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) during its second term in power which began in 2019. Starting with the Citizenship Amendment Act and the protests against its implementation since late 2019 (S. Deb Roy, ‘Locating Gramsci in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh: Perspectives on the Iconic Women’s Protest in India’, Capital & Class, 45:2 (2020), pp. 183–189), the right-wing government faced strong criticism of its poor management of the crisis faced by the migrant workers during the first wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic in India. The recent addition to the wave of people’s movements is the Kisan Andolan (Farmers’ Movement) against the ruling BJP government since September 2020 (See https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/new-farm-bill-2020-who-is-protesting-why/articleshow/78179693.cms [Accessed 30 March 2023]). The largest democracy in the world has been gripped by a massive wave of protests by the agrarian populace at the borders of Delhi, the capital of India. The popular movement against the ruling Central Government led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is rooted in the recently passed farm laws, namely the ‘Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020’ (See http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/222039.pdf [Accessed 30 March 2023]); the ‘Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020’ (See https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/farmers-empowerment-and-protection-agreement-price-assurance-and-farm-services-bill-2020 [Accessed 30 March 2023]); and the ‘Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020’ (See https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/essential-commodities-amendment-bill-2020#:~:text=The%20Essential%20Commodities%20(Amendment)%20Ordinance%2C%202020%20allows%20the%20central,is%20a%20steep%20price%20rise [Accessed 30 March 2023]). These laws which have been enacted to bring forward further corporate and capitalist control over the agricultural production of the country have not been received well by the people at the heart of the agricultural production of the country—the farmers.