Power, Money and Fame

Power, Money and Fame (PMF)—it is on the apex of the pyramid formed by these three forces hang the lives of most of the elite people of the world. The elite, consisting of the world's billionaires, industrialists and infamous state leaders, try their best to maintain their status quo lest they may utterly fall to the ground. The apex, as slippery and hard as it already is to reach it, is a tiny point which not many can keep holding on to. It is more likely that every born human being is in pursuit of reaching that point. Nevertheless, not all those who try reach that point. While some succeed in reaching it, mostly through crooked and unethical ways, the apex-holders who are already there either fall down or push the newcomers into an abyss. This possibility, thus, naturally demands or leads them towards the oppression of the have-nots and the poor so that they continue to be up there. This is exactly what is happening with regard to the protest by the farmers in India.

The elite apex-holders with all their power, money and fame (PMF) are fighting against the powerless, moneyless and fameless (pmf) farmers. The dehumanising acts perpetrated on the pmf farmers by the PMF state leaders in New Delhi for the past several weekd are a witness to the new way of oppression that is now happening in India. While glorifying democracy and the right to speech on one hand, people are silenced on the other when they demand for what rightfully belongs to them.

 ColdWater cannons are used to disperse the protesting farmers out; the tarred roads are cleaved to thwart their marching; barricades and barbed wires are used to limit their occupied space; police forces are used to inflict wounds and enshrine scars on the face of the feeding farmers; the leaders are not meeting the farmers, rather they are campaigning for their parties and are not even ready to dialogue with the protestors, or rather the justice-seekers. The leaders seem to be deliberately doing it, for in the words of Paulo Freire, "Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people-they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress."

Only those who possess the PMF could afford all the afore-mentioned thwarting mechanisms. The pmf farmers, on the other hand, are trying to afford the basic necessities to live a simple and modest life. In spite of everything said above, the protest has already resulted in one great and positive happenstance to the farmers—their treading has led to the dreading of the leaders and the elite.

It is said no symbol is more dangerous for the oppressors than the Jews, for the epic of the Jews is that those who were slaves in Egypt emancipated themselves to create a new society. Yes! They are the symbol of emancipated slaves and that is probably why, over the history, they have been frequently oppressed. Similarly, it is high time that the farmers of India became the symbol of self-emancipation by breaking the chains and clutches that the PMF elite have cast on the farmers by means of 'farm bills, selling of farming lands to the MNCs' and so on.

Let farmers' march continue and voice be heard such that the PMF-built pyramid may collapse and the square dreamt of in the Indian Constitution may spring forth.

Frontier
Vol. 53, No. 28, Jan 10 - 16, 2021