Farm laws repealed

Who: Farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, organised through the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, which Al Jazeera called a coalition of more than 40 farmers' unions on 29 November 2021 (The Quint named 30 organisations as the driving force in November 2020, and The Wire counted 32 Punjab unions in the SKM in December 2021); Prime Minister Narendra Modi; and the Indian Parliament. Al Jazeera notes that Sikhs were the religion of many of the protesting farmers.

What: Parliament passed three farm laws in September 2020; the Rajya Sabha passed two of them by voice vote amid uproar on September 20, and the Akali Dal's Harsimrat Kaur Badal had resigned as a Union minister in protest. Farmers began sit-ins at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur on the Delhi borders on November 26, 2020. On Friday, November 19, 2021, in an address to the nation that coincided with a major Sikh festival, Modi announced the laws would be withdrawn, admitting the government had not persuaded some farmers. On November 29 both houses passed the Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021, without a debate.

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha suspended the protest on December 9 after a letter from the Centre, and the farmers left the borders on December 11. The Morcha said the letter promised a committee on the minimum support price (MSP), withdrawal of cases, and compensation for the families of those who died. The Morcha counted about 715 dead; Al Jazeera notes that the government said it had no record of the deaths, and that a Punjabi University study found nearly all the dead were landless or owned under three acres.

Where: The Delhi borders at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur. Most protesters came from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Why it mattered: The government withdrew its own laws after a year of what Al Jazeera calls a largely peaceful protest, one of the biggest challenges Modi had faced. Analysts quoted by Al Jazeera put the repeal down mainly to coming elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. The Samyukt Kisan Morcha said the fight for a legal guarantee of the MSP would continue.