Indian farmer leader ends 123-day hunger strike

A 70-year-old Indian farmer leader has ended his 123-day hunger strike, which he undertook to press the federal government to meet the demands of protesting farmers.

Jagjit Singh Dallewal finally accepted water, the Punjab state government informed India's Supreme Court, which is hearing a batch of petitions on the issue.

In December, the court had ordered the government of Punjab - where Dallewal is from - to shift him to a hospital as his health deteriorated.

Earlier this month, police cleared the protest sites where the farmers had erected temporary shelters and parked their tractors since February last year.

Dallewal's hunger strike was part of a protest that began on 13 February last year when thousands of farmers gathered at the border between Punjab and Haryana states.

Their demands include assured prices on certain crops, loan waivers and compensation for the families of farmers who died during earlier protests.

Since then, they have made some attempts to march to the capital Delhi but have been stopped at the border by security forces.

This isn't the first time India's farmers have held a massive protest to highlight their issues.

In 2020, they protested for months at Delhi's borders demanding the repeal of three farm laws introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.

The government claimed that the laws would reform the sale of agricultural produce and benefit the community, but farmers argued that they would be opened up to exploitation.

The laws were eventually repealed but protesting farmers have said that the government has not fulfilled the rest of their demands made in 2020.

Dallewal is from Punjab, which relies massively on agriculture for employment but has been seeing a steady decline in farm incomes, leading to debt, suicides and migration.

He is the leader of a farmers' group that is loosely allied with Samyukta Kisan Morcha, a coalition of dozens of unions that co-ordinated the protests in 2020.

He earlier led protests against land acquisition in Punjab and demanded compensation for farmers who died by suicide. In 2018, he led a convoy of tractors towards Delhi to demand the implementation of the recommendations of a 2004 government panel which had suggested remunerative prices for farmers' produce and a farm debt waiver.

In November, before Dallewal started his current hunger strike, he was taken to a hospital by the state police for a check-up. But he returned to the protest site within days, claiming he was detained at the hospital.

In terms of demands, not much has changed from earlier protests. The farmers are pushing for their unfulfilled demands to be met, including a legal guarantee for the minimum support prices, a loan debt waiver, pensions for both farmers and agricultural labourers, no increase in electricity tariffs, the reinstatement of a land acquisition law, and compensation for families of farmers who died during previous protests.

But analysts say there seems to be a change in the way Modi's government is responding to this round of protests.

During the protests in 2020, the federal government had held multiple rounds of talks with the farmers. Top officials, including India's then agriculture and food ministers, were part of the negotiations.

Last February, when the farmers announced their intention to march to Delhi, key federal ministers held two rounds of talks with their leaders but failed to achieve a breakthrough.

But since then, the federal government seems to have distanced itself from the protests. Last week, when Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was asked by reporters if he would invite protesting farmers for talks, he said the government would follow any directives given by the top court.

Experts believe that the government is being cautious this time around to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2020. In October that year, a key meeting between the then agriculture secretary and farmers' unions backfired badly, and catalysed the year-long protest that followed.

In September, the Supreme Court ordered that a committee be set up to look into the farmers' demands.

The committee submitted an interim report in November, which documented the acute crisis faced by India's farmers. Among other things, the report noted the abysmally low wages farmers earn and the massive debts they are reeling under.

It also said that more than 400,000 farmers and farm workers had died by suicide since 1995, when India's National Crime Record Bureau began collecting the data.

The committee also put forward solutions including offering farmers direct income support.

The panel is reportedly in the process of reviewing solutions to boost farm income. It was scheduled to hold talks with various farmers' unions in January.

But some groups have refused to meet them, claiming that the negotiations were not helping them and that the committee should work on providing a safe space to hold protests.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook