-Countercurrents.org Real life has a way of surprising theory. One of the most intensely discussed theoretical questions on the Left has been how to bring agricultural labourers and peasants, including well-to-do peasants, together in a common struggle against landlord domination in India’s countryside. Numerous Marxist gatherings have for years discussed the contradiction between peasants and labourers holding up a decisive resolution of the contradiction between the landlords and the rest of...

-The Tribune The farmers’ protests reflect the western region’s pre-election zeitgeist Uttar pradesh’s regions spanning the west, east, centre and Bundelkhand, exist in silos, each with their own preoccupations and concerns conditioned by economics, geography and demography. However, come an election, political imperatives transcend the distinctive characteristics. UP votes as one state, and has lately, rooted for a single party or coalition. The fractured verdicts that threw UP into disarray in the...

-The Indian Express Party chief J P Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah met MPs, MLAs and district leaders against the backdrop of a string of mahapanchayats by protesting farm leaders in the sugar belt. WARY over the farmer agitation spreading across the Jat belt, the BJP top brass Tuesday held talks with party leaders from Haryana, Rajasthan and Western Uttar Pradesh, resuming their attempts to find ways to end the stalemate. Party...

-The Indian Express A theme common to both mahapanchayats in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, which saw communal violence in 2013, was an appeal to keep religious identities aside and come together as farmers. Muzaffarnagar, Shamli: From Greta Thunberg to sugarcane dues to communal harmony — a mahapanchayat in Shamli on Friday, meant to rally western UP support for the farm protests, saw speakers explain a host of issues to an estimated 10,000-strong crowd. The...

-TheWire.in As much at risk as the farmers if the laws are not repealed, the Dalits are also determined not to be used by the BJP to turn the protests against the new agriculture laws into an issue of landowners’ rights. New Delhi: On January 7, Thursday, when 2,000 labourers of the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union (PKMU) began their journey from Dabwali, Punjab, to the Tikri border between Haryana and Delhi to...