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A tale of two protests: Why Maha farmers captured govt's attention while TN couldn't -TS Sudhir

-TheNewsMinute.com

Politics, the sheer optics of the protest march, language – everything came together to ensure one protest was heard loudly, while the other failed.

Tamil Nadu is watching Mumbai with interest. After all, farmers from Maharashtra managed to do what the Cauvery delta farmers could not.

While over 100 farmers from Tamil Nadu sat in protest in New Delhi for 41 days last year and went back home empty-handed, the Maharashtra farmers managed to meet Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis the day they landed in Mumbai. A majority of their demands were met, although it is a different matter whether the assurances given will be fulfilled or not.

“Our Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami also came and met us finally. CM is no big deal. But the Prime Minister did not meet us because he thinks we are the sin of the nation, fourth-grade citizens who should be met only at election time,” says a bitter P Ayyakannu, who spearheaded the Tamil Nadu farmers agitation.

But Ayyakannu's stout defence apart, the difference in approach between the two agitations perhaps played a part in how the corridors of power responded.

One, the sheer optics of numbers in Maharashtra. It conveyed anger, unrest, pain and suffering. The fact that 35,000 farmers – many of them daily-wage farm labourers – had left work on the fields for six days, meant they were serious about getting their voice heard.

The sight of so many farmers, walking 180 km in the hot sun, getting blisters in their feet, moved even the Mumbaikar, usually obsessed with the pace of his/her own life. The fact that the protest was completely peaceful and disciplined only added value to their demands. As well-known rural affairs journalist and author P Sainath said, they managed to make the deaf hear and the blind see.

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