Why Farmers are Fighting in Modi's India

When India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced a series of agricultural reforms last November, India’s farmers launched what might be the largest protest movement in modern history. An estimated 250 million Indians went on strike in solidarity, and today, tens of thousands of farmers are camped just outside the nation’s capital. Modi’s government has responded by silencing  journalists and detaining activists, raising troubling questions about the state of the world’s largest democracy. Then pop star Rihanna tweeted about the protests, causing an international incident, and all hell broke loose. In this episode, we talk with experts and journalists about India’s new agricultural reforms, why farmers don’t like it, and how platforms like Facebook and Twitter are playing a pivotal role in this conflict.  

 

Guests:

Ravi Agrawal, Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy Magazine

Milan Vaishnav, Director of the South Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and host of Grand Tamasha

Pranav Dixit, Tech reporter for BuzzFeed News, based in New Delhi

If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.