Beyond Farm Laws: How Punjab’s farmers are building a new agricultural resistance 

“Would India recognise the struggles and sacrifices of the Punjab farmers to make a decisive stand against the World Trade Organization’s agenda?” asked Sukhwinder Kaur, a veteran farm union leader. The question hung in the crisp morning air at the Punjab-Haryana border, where a two-kilometre convoy of tractors and trailers has stood parked for nearly a year, transforming the roads into a site of agrarian resistance.  The Haryana government continues to block the agitating farmers at the Punjab-Haryana border, since February 2024, ostensibly to prevent a replay of the historic, 15-month-long protest in 2020-21 at the doors of New Delhi. Now, the fate of what has come to be called the farmers’ movement 2.0, seems to be hanging in the delicate balance of a crucial, life-threatening fast resorted to by one of its leaders.  In November 2021, the first phase of the farmers’ protests ended after the Narendra Modi-led central…


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Prashant Rahi is an electrical and systems engineer, who completed his education from IIT, BHU, before eventually becoming a journalist for about a decade in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. He was the Chairperson for Human Rights and Democracy at the annual Indian Social Science Congresses held between 2011 and 2013, contributing to the theorisation of social activists’ and researchers’ experiences. Rahi devoted the greater part of his time and energy for revolutionary democratic changes as a grassroots activist with various collectives. For seven years, he worked as a Correspondent for The Statesman, chronicling the Uttarakhand statehood movement, while also participating in it. He has also contributed political articles for Hindi periodicals including Blitz, Itihasbodh, Samkaleen Teesri Duniya, Samayantar and Samkaleem Hastakshep. From his first arrest in 2007 December in a fake case, where he was charged as the key organiser of an imagined Maoist training camp in a forest area of Uttarakhand, to his release in March 2024 in the well-known GN Saibaba case, Rahi has been hounded as a prominent Maoist by the state for all of 17 years. In 2024, he joined The Polis Project as a roving reporter, focusing on social movements.