Thousands rally from multiple California cities to Oakland to protest India’s farming laws
Hundreds of protesters drove in a massive car rally from the Bay Area and the Central Valley to Oakland on Saturday morning to protest new agricultural laws in India that many fear will harm Punjabi farmers’ profits.
Multiple car rallies organized by the nonprofit Sikh American organization Jakara Movement were launched from seven cities including Yuba City, Sacramento, Bakersfield and Fresno. Hundreds of protesters’ cars formed a phalanx of vehicles along Highway 99 and Interstates 80 and 880.
Protesters drove to the Indian Consulate in San Francisco to circle the building, honking horns and waving signs, before returning to Oakland’s Middle Harbor Shoreline Park for a rally.
“To show solidarity for international movements is incredibly critical,” said Deep Singh, executive director of the Jakara Movement. “(Agriculture is part of) the livelihoods for a lot of Punjabis and Sikhs in the U.S.”
The protest was the latest in a series of worldwide uprisings against India’s new agricultural laws passed in September by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Under the country’s previous laws, farmers were offered a guaranteed minimum price for certain crops and sold their goods through a government auction system. This system had restrictions on what companies could purchase goods through the auction, and prices were capped for essential items.
Modi’s new laws deregulated this market, allowing farmers to sell their goods to anyone for any price, but eliminating the minimum standard price previously guaranteed.
Farmers fear that these new laws will make it easier for big agricultural companies to force smaller farms to drive down their prices, cutting their profits and making it easier to be exploited and bought out by large agricultural monopolies.
“We want to allow small farmers to be able to sustain themselves,” Singh said. “That is why they’re making this stand. They want a future and they don’t want to be gobbled up.”
Farming is a major political issue in India, where 47% of the population relied on agriculture in 2014, and protests there have become increasingly violent. Protesters who blockaded highways to New Delhi in late November were met with water cannons, tear gas and barricades.
“We’ve seen an erosion of rights for all sections of Indian society, but especially the criminalization of dissent by any minority group,” Singh said. “What you’re seeing here is finally a pushback to an authoritarian and tyrannical regime.”
Though the Jakara Movement is protesting these laws from thousands of miles away, Singh said the point is to send a message to Modi, to show that people from around the world will hold him accountable for how the Indian government responds to Punjab’s farmers and protesters.
“The world is watching,” Singh said. “The Modi government has met farm protesters with increasing violence, and we want … Prime Minister Modi to know he is being watched, and the world will judge him based on how he treats these protesters.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2020 at 11:33 AM.