• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays
 | A farmer at the protest encampment at Delhis Singhu Border carries the flag of the All India Kisan Sabha 21 November 2021 Subin Dennis  Tricontinental Institute for Social Research | MR Online A farmer at the protest encampment at Delhi’s Singhu Border carries the flag of the All India Kisan Sabha, 21 November 2021. (Photo: Subin Dennis / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)

This victory gives confidence for future struggles: The Forty-Seventh Newsletter (2021)

By Vijay Prashad (Posted Nov 27, 2021)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on November 25, 2021 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |
Labor, Revolutions, State Repression, StrategyIndiaNewswireFarmers' Movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tricontinental Newsletter

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

A tractor contingent on GT Karnal Road breaks through barricades and enters Delhi beginning a confrontation between protestors and the police 26 January 2021 Vikas Thakur  Tricontinental Institute for Social Research

A tractor contingent on GT Karnal Road breaks through barricades and enters Delhi, beginning a confrontation between protestors and the police, 26 January 2021. (Photo: Vikas Thakur / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)

On 19 November 2021, a week before the first anniversary of the farmers’ revolt, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi surrendered. He accepted that the three laws on agricultural markets that had been pushed through the parliament in 2020 would be repealed. The farmers of India had won. The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), one of the organisers of the protest movement, celebrated the triumph and declared that ‘this victory gives more confidence for future struggles’.

Many pressing struggles remain, including the fight for a law to guarantee a minimum support price that is one and a half times the cost of production for all crops of all farmers. The failure to address this, the AIKS notes, ‘aggravated the agrarian crisis and led to the suicide of over [400,000] farmers in the last 25 years’. A quarter of these deaths have taken place under Modi’s leadership over the past seven years.

At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have produced four substantial dossiers that reflect on the agrarian crisis in India: an explanation of the farmers’ revolt (The Farmers’ Revolt in India, June 2021); an analysis of the central role of women in both agricultural work and struggles (Indian Women on an Arduous Road to Equality, October 2021); a portrait of the impact of neoliberalism on rural communities (The Neoliberal Attack on Rural India: Two Reports by P. Sainath, October 2019); and a study of the attempt to uberise agricultural workers and farmers (Big Tech and the Current Challenges Facing the Class Struggle, November 2021). Our senior fellow, P. Sainath, has been a key voice in amplifying the agrarian crisis and farmers’ struggles. The section below is an extract from his most recent editorial at the People’s Archive of Rural India:

What the media can never openly admit is that the largest peaceful democratic protest the world has seen in years–certainly the greatest organised at the height of the pandemic–has won a mighty victory.

A victory that carries forward a legacy. Farmers of all kinds, men and women–including from Adivasi [tribal] and Dalit [oppressed caste] communities–played a crucial role in [India’s] struggle for freedom. And in the 75th year of [Indian] Independence, the farmers at Delhi’s gates reiterated the spirit of that great struggle.

Prime Minister Modi has announced he is backing off and repealing the farm laws in the upcoming winter session of Parliament starting on the 29th of [November]. He says he is doing so after failing to persuade ‘a section of farmers despite best efforts’. Just a section, mind you, that he could not convince to accept that the three discredited farm laws were really good for them. Not a word on, or for, the over 600 farmers who have died in the course of this historic struggle. His failure, he makes it clear, is only in his skills of persuasion, in not getting that ‘section of farmers’ to see the light.… What was the manner and method of persuasion? By denying them entry to the capital city to explain their grievances? By blocking them with trenches and barbed wire? By hitting them with water cannons? … By having crony media vilify the farmers every day? By running them over with vehicles–allegedly owned by a union minister or his son? That’s this government’s idea of persuasion? If those were its ‘best efforts’ we’d hate to see its worst ones.

The Prime Minister made at least seven visits overseas this year alone (like the latest one for COP26). But never once found the time to just drive down a few kilometres from his residence to visit tens of thousands of farmers at Delhi’s gates, whose agony touched so many people everywhere in the country. Would that not have been a genuine effort at persuasion?

… This is not at all the end of the agrarian crisis. It is the beginning of a new phase of the battle on the larger issues of that crisis. Farmer protests have been on for a long time now. And particularly strongly since 2018, when the Adivasi farmers of Maharashtra electrified the nation with their astonishing 182-km march on foot from Nashik to Mumbai. Then too, it began with their being dismissed as ‘urban Maoists’, as not real farmers, and the rest of the blah. Their march routed their vilifiers.

… The hundreds of thousands of people in that state who have participated in that struggle know whose victory it is. The hearts of the people of Punjab are with those in the protest camps who have endured one of Delhi’s worst winters in decades, a scorching summer, rains thereafter, and miserable treatment from Mr. Modi and his captive media.

And perhaps the most important thing the protestors have achieved is this: to inspire resistance in other spheres as well, to a government that simply throws its detractors into prison or otherwise hounds and harasses them. That freely arrests citizens, including journalists, under the [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act], and cracks down on independent media for ‘economic offences’. This day isn’t just a win for the farmers. It’s a win for the battle for civil liberties and human rights. A win for Indian democracy.

A farmer participates in the protests in his truck at the Singhu border in Delhi 5 December 2020

A farmer participates in the protests in his truck at the Singhu border in Delhi, 5 December 2020. (Photo: Vikas Thakur / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)

It is a win not only for Indian democracy but for peasants around the world.

During the past five decades, these peasants have experienced a combination of impoverishment, dispossession, and demoralisation on a global level. Two processes have accelerated their crisis: first, a trade and development model pushed by the advanced capitalist states through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO); second, the climate catastrophe. The IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme and the WTO’s liberalised trade regime have eroded price supports and food subsidies in the Global South and have prevented governments from intervening to assist farmers and to build robust national food markets. Countries of the Global North, meanwhile, have continued to subsidise farming and dump their cheapened food in the markets of the Global South. This policy structure–alongside devastating climate events–has been fatal for agriculturalists in the Global South.

During the credit crisis of 2007–08, the World Bank intervened to promote the entry of the private sector (largely big agriculture) into the ‘value chains’ from farms to stores. ‘The private sector drives the organisation of value chains that bring the market to smallholders and commercial farms’, wrote the World Bank in a key report from 2008. In June of that year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s High-Level Conference on World Food Security opened the door for the World Bank to shape agricultural policy to benefit big agriculture. The next year, the World Bank’s World Development Report argued for integrating agriculture in the ‘poor countries with world markets’, which meant delivering the peasants into an uberised relationship with big agriculture. Interestingly, the World Bank’s own International Agricultural Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology disagreed in 2008, arguing that industrial agriculture degraded nature and impoverished peasants.

A farmer from Punjab protests during a tractor march on Republic Day on GT Karnal Bypass Road in Delhi 26 January 2021

A farmer from Punjab protests during a tractor march on Republic Day on GT Karnal Bypass Road in Delhi, 26 January 2021. (Photo: Vikas Thakur / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)

In September 2021, the UN held a Food Systems Summit in New York, which was designed not by farmers’ unions but by the World Economic Forum (WEF), a private body that represents big business rather than the big hearts of the agriculturalists. Acknowledging the crisis imposed by capitalism, the WEF now says that it has learned from civil action and would like to promote ‘stakeholder capitalism’. This new kind of capitalism, which looks like the old capitalism, is about promoting corporations as ‘trustees of society’; it entrusts corporations with our well-being rather than the workers who produce the value in our society.

The farmers’ revolt in India fought against Modi’s three laws, which will now be repealed. But it continues to struggle against the transfer of policy making from democratic, multilateral, and national projects to corporations in the name of ‘public-private partnerships’ and ‘trustees of society’. The repeal of Modi’s laws is one victory. It has lifted the confidence of the people. But there are other battles ahead.

At the protest sites, farmers set up entire villages, including community kitchens and libraries. Reading and musical performance were regular activities. Revolutionary Punjabi poetry from figures such as Pash (1950–1988) and Sant Ram Udasi (1939–1986) lifted their spirits. Navsharan Singh and Vikas Rawal offered us these stanzas from Sant Ram Udasi to close out this newsletter:

You must shine your light
in the courtyards of workers
who wither when there is a drought,
and drown when there is a flood,
ones who face devastation in every disaster,
and who find liberation only in death.

A farmer who joined in the initial protest reads work by the revolutionary Punjabi poet Pash in his trolly at the Singhu border in Delhi 10 December 2021

A farmer who joined in the initial protest reads work by the revolutionary Punjabi poet, Pash, in his trolly at the Singhu border in Delhi, 10 December 2021. (Photo: Vikas Thakur / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)

You must show what goes on
in the courtyards of the workers
for whom the bread is scarce,
who live in darkness,
who are robbed of
their self-respect,
and who lose, with their crops,
all their desires.

Why do you burn to shine your light only on yourself?
Why do you stay away from the workers?
These deprivations and oppression will not last forever.
O sun, you must shine your light on
the courtyards of the workers.

Warmly,

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Farmers' Movement Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tricontinental Newsletter
‘U.S. Capitalism Born in Blood: From the First Thanksgiving to Today’ w/ Dr. Gerald Horne
Out of Afghanistan
  • Also by Vijay Prashad

    • The people want peace and progress, not war and waste: The Twenty-Fourth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad June 13, 2025
    • Hundreds of millions are dying of hunger: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 30, 2025
    • How the International Monetary Fund underdevelopes Africa: The Twenty-First Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 23, 2025
    • A language of blood has gripped our world: The Twentieth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 16, 2025
  • Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

    • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
    • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
    • Preface January 01, 2022
    • Introduction January 01, 2022
    • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
    • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
    • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

    Books By Vijay Prashad

    • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
    • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

    Monthly Review Essays

    • The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle
      Iker Suarez  | A banner at a memorial rally for victims of the 2014 massacre of migrants at Tarajal 2021 | MR Online

      Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone.[1] On June 2022, the border fence of Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, was witness to a massacre that killed or disappeared over a hundred African migrants.[2]  A recent BBC investigation revealed that Greek border guards systematically repeal immigrants already on Greek […]

    Lost & Found

    • Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the New Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution
      Hugo Chávez  | Mural of Chávez in Caracas Univision | MR Online

      On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

    Trending

    • Trump
      Mainstream media ignore Trump’s planned Office of Remigration, a term for ethnic cleansing
    • Plutonian Mac: December 2017
      Official: U.S.-Israeli deception gave Iran false security ahead of attack
    • Figure 2 – Credit: Matt Kenard / Declassified 2023
      The urgency of abolishing Britain’s colonial bases in Cyprus
    • A building damaged in an Israeli strike on Tehran, on 13 June 2025 (Atta Kenner/AFP)
      Exclusive: U.S. quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack
    • Protesters in San Juan celebrate the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló, July 25, 2019.
      A Potentially Politically Hot Summer in Puerto Rico
    • A banner at a memorial rally for victims of the 2014 massacre of migrants at Tarajal, 2021.
      The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle
    • Senior Israeli official talks with Israel’s Channel 12 News
      Sky News smears Greta Thunberg as a Nazi to justify IDF attack
    • Aftermath of Israeli airstrike in Tehran, June 13, 2025. Photo courtesy Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons.
      Gaslighting the way to World War III
    • Books
      The Trump administration is banning books on military bases. We sued.
    • Colombian president defends social justice and labor reforms amid right-wing threats.Photo: Presidencia Colombia/X.
      Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounces U.S.-backed coup plot and urges popular consultation for social justice

    Popular (last 30 days)

    • Trump
      Mainstream media ignore Trump’s planned Office of Remigration, a term for ethnic cleansing
    • This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows six U.S. B-2 stealth bombers parked at Camp Thunder Cove in Diego Garcia on April 2, 2025. Though officially deployed for operations in Yemen, the presence of these nuclear-capable aircraft in striking range of Iran has raised concerns that the U.S. is quietly preparing to support a potential Israeli attack. Photo | AP
      Staging for a strike? U.S. quietly moves bombers as Israel prepares to hit Iran
    • Plutonian Mac: December 2017
      Official: U.S.-Israeli deception gave Iran false security ahead of attack
    • America is a scam
      America is a scam
    • New Pan-African Path
      Forging a new Pan-African path: Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, and the Land of the Upright People
    • Figure 2 – Credit: Matt Kenard / Declassified 2023
      The urgency of abolishing Britain’s colonial bases in Cyprus
    • A building damaged in an Israeli strike on Tehran, on 13 June 2025 (Atta Kenner/AFP)
      Exclusive: U.S. quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack
    • A black and white photograph of Paulo Freire later in life. Freire is bald, bearded, and wears large eyeglasses.
      Pedagogy and Class Power: Reclaiming Freire in an Age of Reaction
    • Activist Greta Thunberg stands near the stage during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Mannheim, Germany, on Dec. 6, 2024. Uwe Anspach | AP
      From media darling to persona non grata: Greta Thunberg’s journey
    • Tianjin Qiaoyuan Park in Tianjin, one of the earliest sponge city projects in China. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
      Don’t believe the New Cold War lies, China is leading the world in climate solutions

    RSS MR Press News

    • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) June 13, 2025
    • The legacy of a Sardinian original (Roses for Gramsci reviewed in ‘Counterpunch’) June 13, 2025
    • LISTEN: Gramsci’s lasting contributions (Andy Merrifield on ‘Against the Grain’) June 6, 2025
    • Why did Marxism fall into such deep crisis in the West? (Western Marxism reviewed in ‘Socialism and Democracy’) June 5, 2025
    • A remarkable personal journey WATCH: Andy Merrifield, author of Roses for Gramsci, at The Marxist Education Project June 4, 2025

    RSS Climate & Capitalism

    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2025 June 17, 2025
    • 1.5 is dead: How hot will the Earth get? June 5, 2025
    • Carbon capture company emits more than it captures June 3, 2025
    • Some thoughts on Nature and the German Peasants’ War May 23, 2025
    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2025 May 19, 2025

     

    RSS Monthly Review

    • June 2025 (Volume 77, Number 2) June 1, 2025 The Editors
    • The Trump Doctrine and the New MAGA Imperialism June 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
    • The War in Ukraine—A History: How the U.S. Exploited Fractures in the Post-Soviet Order June 1, 2025 Thomas I. Palley
    • Big Pharma and Monopoly Capital: Four Dynamics in the Decline of Innovation June 1, 2025 Jia Liu
    • What’s going on June 1, 2025 Marge Piercy

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Creative Commons License

    Monthly Review Foundation
    134 W 29TH ST STE 706
    New York NY 10001-5304

    Tel: 212-691-2555