The 2020–2021 Indian farmers’ protest is an ongoing campaign against three farm laws which were passed by the Parliament of India in September 2020. National and international media have been heavily censoring what is now known as the largest peaceful and enduring protest in the history of social movements. It all began on November 26, 2020 in India. 250 million people stood together in a united worker/farmer strike. Farmer unions and their representatives demanded that the laws be repealed and will not accept anything short of it.
The laws, often called the Farm Bills, have been described as “anti-farmer laws”. They would leave farmers at the mercy of corporations with monopoly control over the purchase, pricing, and distribution of farm products.
Stock market advisors are asking: Who benefits from the Farm Bills? … Specifically, it seems the mega-corporations owned by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani. Also during the Covid lockdowns, Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg invested 5.7 billion dollars, and Google/Alphabet Inc , invested 4.5 billion dollars for an equity stake in Ambani’s mega-corporation Jio. This Facebook, Google and Ambani alliance is set to capture India’s internet boom and forced-transition to a “digital economy”. In this business plan, WhatsApp is slated to become the purchase-point of food distribution in India, eliminating small-businesses, local vendors and neighborhood corner shops, and farmers markets.
In mid-January 2021, the Indian physicist, and ecologist Vandana Shiva wrote an article for the Times of India. She said: Neither farming, nor food can be a mere ‘commodity’. …. The food web is the web of life — how we grow, transport and process our food is the single biggest determinant of the health of our planet and our own individual health.
At the beginning of February, 2021, Vandana Shiva sat down for an interview on India’s Farmer Protests and the colonial history of farmers rebellions with Aditi Mayer.
Vandana Shiva earned her PhD in quantum theory at the University of Western Ontario. She then became one of the passionate defenders of soil, seed and farming and is based in Dehra Dun, India. Vandana Shiva explains why India’s farmers are no strangers to the corporate hijacking of the fruit of they labor, their land and farming culture. Aditi Mayer is a labor rights activist, and frequent speaker on topics of social and environmental justice. This program was produced on February 15, 2021
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
