Mandsaur, the farmers' story -Shiv Visvanathan

-The Hindu

Information has not graduated to storytelling to dent the regime’s idea of agricultural policy

I remember years ago the Delhi School of Economics had many great scholars visit the campus. They talked passionately and knowledgeably not just about the subject but about knowledge as a vocation. One of the most memorable of these performances was by Teodor Shanin, the economic historian who also edited Peasants and Peasant Societies. He talked quietly about his love for his subject and confessed, “I have been studying the peasantry when it was out of fashion, I am in it now when it is fashionable, and I will be there long after it has become out of fashion again.” I recollected his passion as I read sadly about farmers’ protests across India, particularly in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh.

It was not the nature of the reports that was distressing. It was more the way the regime was reacting to it. It was a kind of repeat of its response to the farmers complaining about the long drought in Tamil Nadu. Watching the protest and its drama, one sensed the regime did not care. The protest was dismissed as a colourful spectacle. The peasant as victim was dismissed as a futile clown, a failed trickster.

Weaving the narrative

One must emphasise that this was not due to the callousness of media reporting. Over the last month, journalists have captured the protests of the farmers in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. They have emphasised that what is rocking India is not only the battle of caste groups or worker struggles but the huge range of farmer protests across the country. Yet, one senses news is not enough. Information has not graduated to storytelling or even knowledge to dent the regime’s idea of agricultural policy. Something like what Buddhist monks dub “a touch of wholeness”. Somehow the narratives of agriculture have never possessed that sense. One misses an Indian Shanin, who can weave theory and practice, storytelling and policy together.

The government’s reaction, bordering between illiteracy and indifference, has often made social scientists cynical. They retreat into the realm of jokes, of slapstick or concentration camp humour. The jokes might sound silly but they hit home, conveying the despair of the spectator and witness. I remember two in particular.

A former member of the now disbanded Planning Commission asks his class at the Delhi School of Economics, “What is the difference between the Congress and the BJP?” Answer: the Congress knows economics but not agriculture. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is illiterate about both.

The second comment comes from the tragedy, the continuous epidemic of agricultural suicides that have haunted India for over a decade. The question is why John Maynard Keynes is not applicable to India. This joke remembers Keynes’s observation that in the long run, we are all dead. In India, we are dead in the short run too if one looks at suicide and starvation deaths. Behind the drab comedy, there is a poignant point. We might be an agricultural country, but our rulers lack a sense of political economy or sociology of agriculture.

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