Farmers Protest turns violent

Farmers Protest & Foreign Support, Justified?

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Here we are going to analyze if International Celebrities should interfere with farmers’ protests and did India ever affect or comment on the internal matter of any other country. We will see if PM Narendra Modi really endorsed President Trump for the second term and a few more background about this protest for complete understanding.

Amid Farmers protest in India, recently global celebrities jumped in and started asking why the world is not talking about this.

They poured their full support into this. These celebrities are from diverse backgrounds pop singer Rihanna, climate activist Greta and ex-sex-star Mia Khalifa, and many more.

Protest supporters took that as a morale booster for them while the majority of the Indian public took that as interference in the internal matter of a sovereign country. Actually, It didn’t go well with the Govt of India (GoI) too and they came to counter such supports.

Definitely, after that many Indian celebrities voiced that this is an internal issue and will be solved amicably and doesn’t need any interfere from outside.

Now, many are questioning that –

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Was it appropriate that Government of India (GoI) had to tweet against this?

The answer is YES, because these celebrities have a huge list of followers behind them, if they tweet anything, it reaches millions of people. (that is why they charge in millions for a single post for brand endorsement), It sets a narrative because we all know that majority of the public don’t want to know the ground reality, they are just blind followers.

Now, many are criticizing GoI for this and saying what happened when PM Modi had said Abki Baar Trump Sarkaar to support Trump? Why did world leaders tweet about the 6 Jan Capitol Hill riot? Wasn’t that an internal issue in the USA?

So, let us take that one by one and try to analyze that –

Did PM Modi endorse Trump for the second term?

For this, I see the tweet by ANI official handle and its transcript goes like this –

Friends, we in India, have connected well with President Trump, The words of Candidate Trump, “Abki baar, Trump Sarkaar”… rang loud and clear.

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India in 2019

Please note “Candidate” Trump, it simply says in 2016, when he was a candidate for the office of the US President, he used this slogan in one of his presidential campaigns.

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Even Minister for External Affair (MEA), GoI S Jaishankar also clarified here that Modi never endorsed President Trump for the second term.

But anyway, I can leave this to you to decide what was the reality and how it was twisted. It was the same hoax like 15 Lakhs in everyone’s account.  

Again, on the same line, Namaste Trump was a program in India when President Trump was here. In Hindi, we say Namaste on many occasions so for this also, people may have these 3 different interpretations,

  1. Welcome to India, Mr. President
  2. Welcome to your second tenure as Mr. President
  3. Farewell from the office of Mr. President.

Again, anyone is free to follow their narrative based on their mindset and ideology.

Now Next –

If tweets by many world leaders against the Capitol hill riot were justified then why others can’t tweet in favor of Farmers Protests?

To answer this, we need to take a look into these two incidents and then look for answers –

On 6 Jan 2021, Many rioters stormed the Capitol State building, against the law of land, and after that, law enforcement authorities came into action and made many arrests.

Now, let us see what happened in India, right after 20 days, On 26 Jan 2021, thousands of protesters stormed the Red Fort and hoisted the religion-specific flag, which is against the law. In addition to this, police were attacked during this and hundreds of policemen were hospitalized and now celebrities are tweeting that paramilitary forces are violent against protesters. This type of narrative is wrong, This needs to be stopped.

Now Indian authorities and police are taking due actions against that. Blocking the internet in the area of farmers’ protest to spread propaganda and control but here world celebrities from all around are questioning the shut down of the Internet and projecting that as brutality by Govt of India.

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With this, I want to also mention that till 26 Jan, everything was peaceful, no govt clampdown or anything. Both parties had 11 rounds of dialog. But after the 26 Jan incident, when it became violent and all the unfortunate events happened, even after that Famers’ leaders are asking for the release of farmers arrested for the 26 Jan incident.

Why Govt of India is harsh on twitter and asking them to block/delete many accounts?

GoI has already identified and asked Twitter to suspend/delete about 250 accounts as they had changed their location from Pakistan to India and tweeting to create conflict based on religion in India. Along with this, many tweet handles are trending #modiplanningfarmersgenocide and govt and asked to block them too. Considering this situation of propaganda, celebrities’ tweets are adding further fuel to the fire and that is the reason GoI is taking this very seriously to avoid any untoward incident.

Background

What that protest is all about?

It is about 3 Farm laws which GoI has passed from the parliament and President has signed this. So Farmers are protesting to REPEAL these laws without any condition. GoI is ready to make amendments in the laws, already had 11 rounds of discussion, even offered to suspend these laws for 18 months and form a committee to discuss. Supreme Court of Indian has also formed a committee to talk with both parties and come to an amicable resolution but protesters have rejected everything.

Interesting to note here that protesting farmers are NOT from the whole country, mainly they are from 2-3 states only and have taken the national capital as a hostage.

PM Modi has promised to double the income of farmers and has taken many steps in his first tenure as well.

What was the need for these new farms laws?

Without going into too much detail, With the data for 2016, 3,33,407 farmers have died by suicide in India since 1995, when the NCRB started publishing farmer suicide data.

These existing Farms laws are from the 1960s, with the time they needed to change, but with these change, existing policies will be coexistence as well, but still, this farmers’ protest is on to REPEAL them unconditionally.

What is MSP/ Subsidy in India and rest of the world?

Indian govt provides farmers some fixed amount for their crops. This is known as Minimum Support Price (MSP). WTO and many countries have always opposed subsidy and MSP as they believe it hinders fair competition in agriculture.

But still, GoI gives farmers this, though there has not been any law as it adds to the govt expenditure. Farmers are also demanding to make this a law. So basically they want to repeal all news laws and make a new law that was never there. And Yes, many international celebrities are supporting this protest without asking their own govt to ensure MSP or subsidy to farmers in their home country.

I hope it made few points clear and to why we don’t want outsiders to set any type of narration about this farmers’ protest or any internal matter of the country.

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