Making sense of agrarian distress and peasant struggles in Punjab

ABSTRACT This paper situates peasant struggles in a larger context to unravel the consequences of the accumulated agrarian distress in Punjab. The Punjab peasantry has a rich legacy of resistance against the injustice of the statecraft. The all-inclusive character of the present peasant movement, to engage people across castes, classes, creeds, gender, regions, religions and ethnicity is an outcome of this legacy. Beyond these features, the significance of the movement also lies in the understanding of the protesting people about the importance of land, food sovereignty and the responsibility of the democratic state to ensure food security for the marginalized.