1st Edition

A People's History of the Farmers' Movement, 2020–2021

Edited By Shamsher Singh, Sabah Siddiqui Copyright 2025
288 Pages 31 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

288 Pages 31 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

288 Pages 31 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

In the annals of India’s history, a monumental uprising unfolded in 2020, echoing the resilience and coming together of large sections of its agrarian base. Instigated by the contentious farm laws of 2020, the Farmers’ Movement burgeoned into a year-long saga of protest and perseverance, ending only in December 2021 after the passing of the Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021 by the Indian Parliament.... Read more

1 Why do we need a people’s history of the farmers’ movement?

SHAMSHER SINGH AND SABAH SIDDIQUI

2 Farm protests take the country by storm

ZOYA HASAN

3 The anti-farm law movement and the agrarian question in India

SHAMSHER SINGH AND PARAMJIT SINGH

4 Deepening ties with the homeland: multiple dimensions of the UK Sikh diaspora’s role in the farmers’ protest

PRITAM SINGH

5 Farmers’ Morcha 2020–2021: background, achievements, and challenges

BALWINDER SINGH TIWANA

6 Protest-landscape of the farmers’ movement in Haryana

MAHABIR S. JAGLAN AND RAJESHWARI

7 Acquiescence and assertion: the Kisan Andolan and a changing socio-political landscape in Uttar Pradesh

VISHAL SINGH DEO AND AKRAM AKHTAR CHOUDHARY

8 Making of farmers’ resistance in northern Rajasthan: a study of Shahjahanpur border protest

SUDHIR KUMAR SUTHAR, ANKIT SINGH, AND LOKESH SWAMI

9 Farmers’ protests in Rajasthan: continuing a historic legacy

S. MOHANAKUMAR, SANJAY MADHAV, AND PREM KUMAR

10 The farmers’ protests in Maharashtra

ASHOK DHAWALE AND AMIT NARKAR

11 Loh Langar Tapde Rahen: revolution and food in the farmers’ movement

SABAH SIDDIQUI AND SARABJEET DHODY NATESAN

12 Women and songmaking in the anti-farm laws movement: a case study of the Badowal Toll Plaza in Haryana

KOPAL

13 Reappropriation of space: creation of temporary counter-space for protest at Tikri

VAIDEHI LAVAND, ONKAR KHEBUDKAR, NINAD REVATKAR, AND RAMIYA GOPALKRISHNAN

14 Uploading tractor to Twitter: how protesters used media during farmers’ movement

HARINDER HAPPY AND SHIVAM MOGHA

15 Protest songs of identity and existence in the peasants’ movement

PRATEEK

Biography

Shamsher Singh teaches sociology at FLAME University, Pune, India. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Management in Agriculture (CMA), Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has been involved in conducting village studies on agrarian relations and conditions across different agro-ecological regions in India and has worked on rural housing, living standards, unfree labour, and residential segregation. He curates the People’s Archive of Farmers’ Protests (https://pafp.in) that documents the mobilisations and protest actions of the farmers’ movement of 2020–21.

Sabah Siddiqui is assistant professor at the School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, Krea University, Sricity, Andhra Pradesh. She received her doctorate from the University of Manchester and is currently Honorary Research Fellow there. She has worked on the psychology and sociology of religion through a psychoanalytic and anthropological lens in her monograph Religion and Psychoanalysis in India (2016). Most recently, she has co-edited a special issue on Psychoanalytic Perspectives on South Asia (2024) for the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society.