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I found this sentence a pithy summary of the whole article: "Jats own roughly three-fourths or four-fifths of all agricultural land in Haryana and eastern Punj
by haltingproblem 6y ago
I found this sentence a pithy summary of the whole article:
"Jats own roughly three-fourths or four-fifths of all agricultural land in Haryana and eastern Punjab, respectively. Nearly all medium- and large-scale farmers in both states are reputed to belong to the Jat community. The farm protesters’ claim to have mobilized 200,000 tractors for their Republic Day rally on Jan. 26 confirms the prevalence of relatively large-scale farmers among the protesters, given that few Indian farmers own enough land to practice mechanized agriculture. Even today, the typical Indian farmer is still 10 times more likely to own a bullock than a tractor.
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This is a protest by a community of 1-2 million rich farmers afraid that their monopolization of government supports will be questioned by the other 300-400 million poor farmers who subsist without state support on meager holdings.
- strikelaserclaw 6y agoThat is why the whole celebrities supporting the farmer protests was perplexing to me. These protests seems to be a case of a minority of farmers in the Punjab and Haryana region wanting to keep special privileges not afforded to the vast majority of Indian farmers. The reforms as a whole seem to me at least to be beneficial to a majority of the farmers.
- haltingproblem 6y agoThe celebrities don't care about the farmers or their causes. Celebrities (of all stripes, cultural, intellectual, economic) need to virtue signal. The need to virtue signal comes from establishing their virtuousness to justify their incredible privilege. This inherent fairness is built into our dna as an evolutionary mechanism. Combine this need to virtue signal with social media's vast reach and you get the spectre of celebrities as diverse as AOC, Mia Khalifa, Greta and Rihanna tweeting in support of farmers.