Punjab elections 2022: Why haven't strong parties emerged from farmers' movements, even after three decades?

However, despite this significance and the strong mobilisation by the farmers, which led to the repeal of the union government’s three farm laws a few months ago, one wonders what explains the absence of a pan-Punjab political party representing the farmers and their issues dedicatedly.

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By extension, why have we not seen effective farmer parties germinating from the farmers’ movement itself?

There is, of course, the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha contesting the elections this time, but the party’s formation seems to have come too late to materialise, at least in this election cycle.

On the face of it, it makes strategic sense for farmers to make sure that their movement transcends party lines because they know their problems cannot be solved by singular fixes or one-time interventions. This could perhaps be why throughout the farm agitations in northern India, particularly in Punjab and Haryana, farmers constantly emphasised the ‘non-ideological’ nature of the movement.

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Yet, another thing to remember is that the political arena is both uncertain as well as requires significant investment in time and money. It is when these factors collide with agriculture as a full-time professional practice, things become trickier for the farmers and differences arise. Many believe that politics is an activity that should be left to professional politicians only. Others also believe that pinning their hopes and aspirations on one political party is a risky bet, because of the uncertainties of parties winning and losing. Ultimately, given the dynamic nature of agriculture, as well as the various factors that affect the prioritisation of particular issues, clinging most of their hopes on the success of one political party, for many farmers, defeats the purpose of their movement.

Parties can only be limited to their role as pressure groups

However, while the recent farm agitation started with a very specific demand of repealing the three farm laws, even the movement saw itself transform into an umbrella protest for various other demands, ranging from legalising the Minimum Support Price (MSP) to limiting farm input costs. The larger congregation of these demands under the farmers’ umbrella would perhaps make it even harder for a party emerging out of the movement to keep up with the demands coming from down below, especially as several things ail the sector. Some of these demands have been argued for a long time.

Thus, unlike movements with more limited and specific demands, where it was easier to keep the government accountable because the goals were easily tangible, resolving most of these issues would require a constant struggle even for the movement itself. To solve it with a political party becomes even harder, as the room to struggle shrinks, especially when the party comes to power.

Ultimately, the two possible reasons why farmers’ associations have been unable to transform themselves into viable political parties are as follows. For one, the demands will keep on changing and their volume increasing, which can never work with having just one political party in place. On the other hand, the constant nature of the struggle that agriculture as an unorganised sector has to deal with implies that perhaps, it is more viable to take things up as pressure groups for whom this is a part-time vocation, as opposed to the travails of full-time politics.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how the coalition of Sanyukt Kisan Morcha and Sanyukt Sangharsh Party fare on March 10, and how the intensity of the recent protests affects the sentiment of Punjab’s electorate.

(The views expressed are personal.)