In light of the sustained farmers’ agitation at Delhi against three new agricultural laws, Prime Minister Narendra Modi coined two new term...
In light of the sustained farmers’ agitation at Delhi against three new agricultural laws, Prime Minister Narendra Modi coined two new terms to describe the protesters: he said they were andolan jeevis (people who thrived on protest) who were under the sway of FDI – not Foreign Direct Investment, as the acronym is commonly understood, but Foreign Destructive Ideology.
In 2020 alone, the country witnessed several significant protests: they included agitations against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act and proposed National Register of Citizens; against violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus; to demand the revival of the the BSNL public sector telecom undertaking; three labour codes; to express outrage at the gangrape of a Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras.
A broad range of Indians participated in these protests: members of opposition political parties, student organisations, employee associations, trade unions, worker’s rights groups, environmental activists, human rights advocates and journalists.
The government has refused to submit to the protesters’ demands. On the contrary, it has been reluctant to budge even an inch and is leaning towards the kind of foolhardy valour that the statesman like Chanakya warned against in the Arthashastra.
Four methods
In his treatise, Chankaya advises a ruler to anticipate the discontentment among his subjects and take appropriate steps to prevent it from...
