Peasants’ plights : From Bangladesh to the USA via Palestine -Abu Muaj and Moinul Alam

Farmers may be termed the most important citizens of a country, but unfortunately, their contribution has been neglected for centuries, and they are perhaps the most ignored citizens across the globe. What will happen if the farmers stop working, thereby halting crop production? We will not have food on our dining table, and the whole food supply mechanism will undoubtedly collapse.

In Bangladesh, which is the 7th among the most disaster-prone countries in the world, the struggles of farmers for their rights are not new. The farmers led a number of movements to assert their rights. In the 1770s, the Fakir-Sannyasi Movement took place, and Fakir Majnu Shah was one of the famous leaders of the movement. Hindu and Muslim masses, peasants as well as non-peasants, participated in the movement.

The ‘Wahabi’ and Faraizi movements took place between 1820 and 1850. Under Wahhabi influence, a local peasant, Titumir of 24-Parganas, started his movement against the local (Hindu) zamindar for imposing illegal cesses (abwab), including the humiliating beard tax on Muslim peasants. His movement was short-lived, sporadic, and against immediate exploiters to get rid of immediate exploitation.

From 1914 on, the period of peasant mobilisation began on a larger scale. They organized the first praja, or peasant conference, at Kamarer Char in Jamalpur (Mymensingh). In the movement of 1914, men like Fazlul Huq, Maulana Mohammad Akram Khan, Maulana Maniruzzaman Islamabadi, and Maulvi Rajibuddin Tarafdar of upper-peasant backgrounds and connections demanded better rights for the peasants and criticized the zamindari system. Soon, under the patronage of Governor Ronaldshay, several peasant and Namasudra organisations came into being. In late 1917, Fazlul Huq and a group of Muslim lawyers and journalists founded the Calcutta Agricultural Association.

Even in the twenty-first century, the plight of farmers in this country continues. Our heroes of the soil are still deprived of profit. A vegetable they produce through their hard work is being sold in the capital city at a price that is almost ten times the production cost. The farmers get nothing from the huge selling price. On the other hand, consumers in the town also suffer due to the extreme price of agricultural produce. Middlemen, who are actually goons with political clout from the ruling party, pocket the profit. Many ‘so-called’ bids were initiated to bring smiles to the faces of farmers, but most of them proved to be theatrics. The Awami League government encouraged over one crore farmers to open bank accounts at nominal costs in the most recent effort to change the fate of farmers. The figure of farmers’ bank accounts dropped to 10,150,794 at the end of March 2020 from 10,186,605 in January 2020. During this time around, it was found that each farmer’s bank account has deposits of Tk 346.63 on average, which reflect their poor capacity for savings. It also proved to be futile for the farmers, bringing little or no good to the grower or producers at the end of the day.

That’s why the most unorganized farmers had to resort to different movements throughout history.

Among all the odds, the Nayakrishi Andolon (New Agriculture Movement) is the farmer-led movement in Bangladesh for Shohoj Way to Ananda. It started as an organic farming movement in the 1990s, with 10 simple rules to follow and practice in farming. The Bangla word Ananda means joy, and Shohoj is the collective capacity of our faculties, helping us to grow as natural biological beings in harmony with the natural world that we share with all other life forms. Nayakrishi reclaims the philosophical tradition of the people of Bengal, articulated in the oral culture, poetry, songs, and spiritual traditions of Bengal. The farmers of our country are struggling hard to cope with climate change; therefore, they need to be trained with the latest concepts and mechanisms.

The plight of the farmers is not confined only to Bangladesh but is visible elsewhere across the world, including our sub-continent, Europe, and even the United States. During the years 2020–2021, the Indian farmers’ protest was a protest against the enactment of three farm acts passed by the Indian parliament in September 2020. The debatable Acts, often called the Farm Bills, had been described as “anti-farmer laws” by many farmer unions and politicians from the opposition, who said that they would leave farmers at the “mercy of corporations. During the movement of 2020, Indian farmers came out with peaceful protests that included a railway blockade, a long march towards Delhi, and the blocking of borders and roads. During the Republic Day parade, tens of thousands of farmers protesting agricultural reforms held a parade with a large convoy of tractors and drove into Delhi. Among others, Ashok Dhawale, the husband of Mariam Dhawale, is the movement’s leader. Mariam is the national general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association. Together, they form one of the leading organizing families in the current world. The significant participation of women, who drove tractors and made highways their homes, in the farmers’ movement is really noteworthy.

Despite India being largely self-sufficient in food-grain production and having welfare schemes, hunger, poverty, and malnutrition remain serious issues, with India ranking as one of the worst countries in the world in food security parameters. Due to unfulfilled previous demands, Indian farmers started another movement on February 13, 2024.

Farmers across Europe are urging EU officials to deal with farmers’ concerns over prices and bureaucratic rules that limit their ability to produce food and attain prosperity. The ongoing protests by farmers who have been taking to the streets and obstructing motorways and logistics hubs across Europe since January have brought attention to this tragic situation.

These are people who produce Europe’s food, whether conventionally or organically, on a small or medium scale. They stand united by a shared reality: they are fed up with spending their lives working incessantly without ever getting a decent income. Farmers have said they face falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, powerful and domineering retailers, debt, climate change, and cheap foreign imports all within an EU agricultural system based on the premise that “bigger is better.”.

In the United States of America, President Biden’s policies seem against the farmers. As a result, the plight of farmers has also escalated in recent years. Since the first day of President Biden’s term, America’s farmers, ranchers, and producers have come under constant attack through burdensome regulations, exacerbated by record inflation, high input costs, the politicization of crop protection tools, anti-energy initiatives, supply chain disruptions, and labor shortages.

Agriculture relies heavily on energy production, and these disastrous anti-American energy policies directly impact the farmers who feed and fuel the country. It is not just an issue related to energy. America’s farmers, ranchers, and landowners have come under regulatory assault on other fronts. The Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule plunged rural communities into ambiguity and would cut off farmers’ access to their own land. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has similarly sought to limit anti-pest medicines to curb damaging pests and diseases, increase yields while using fewer inputs, and implement critical conservation practices.

Even the food production system in Palestine, which has every possibility of being a land of milk and honey, is targeted by the Israeli Defence Forces. The Jewish colonial state has destroyed 80 percent of the fishing boats as the colonial power weaponized fishing on the Gaza coast as its starvation tactic against its colony, which is Palestine. Apart from destroying fishing boats, the Israeli Defence Forces admitted that they damaged croplands in the Gaza Strip by spraying herbicide.

From the above discussion, it is very much imminent that a farmers’ revolution may be triggered in different countries against state bodies. However, sporadic protests by the farmers are unlikely to be successful, as the state has always been in an advantageous position. For reducing the plights of the farmers, it is unity that may act as the key to the success of such movements.