In many ways, the Delhi march was a continuation of protests that erupted in September, when the BJP-controlled national legislature pushed through three controversial bills meant to open up the agricultural sector to large corporate and financial interests. As of Tuesday, the central government has started meeting with farm union leaders, but protesters say that will keep camping at the border until their demands are met. This was not merely a symbolic one-day affair. Although some farmers ended up at the official protest site, most rejected the offer and remained at the border, with some saying they had brought enough food and provisions to stay for months. The government, recognizing the determination of demonstrators, granted them permission to hold a protest in a far-off corner of Delhi, away from the city’s centers of power. In one video, a protester emphatically explained to a policeman at the barricades that “this is a revolution, sir.” Social media was suddenly awash with images of farmers using tractors and trucks to break down the barriers erected by police to keep them out of the city. And so the sight of people out on the streets in protest was a striking display.Įven more importantly, the general strike converged with a march launched by a broad group of farmers’ organizations, all planning to descend on the capital of Delhi. Back in March, the government used the pandemic as an excuse to crack down on and clear the last physical remnants of widespread protests against its discriminatory citizenship laws. But this being 2020, the November 26 walkout also had a different quality to it. Last week’s general strike in India featured some of these components: the call by national-level unions in response to the BJP’s anti-worker policies the claims of massive turnout (250 million people, in this case) and the time-limited nature of the strike. And then life seemingly returns to normal. Left media outside the country hail the walkout, while the mainstream media in India barely mentions it. Strike leaders tout the action as perhaps the largest strike in history. Millions of people across the country pour into the streets in support. First, the major national-level trade unions - save for the one aligned with Modi’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - call for a one- or two-day general strike, usually in response to the BJP’s latest raft of anti-worker policies. General strikes in the era of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi have an oddly repetitive quality to them.
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