As the light faded one July evening and the weather turned cool, Virender Singh, a farmer in western Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar who owns...
As the light faded one July evening and the weather turned cool, Virender Singh, a farmer in western Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar who owns over 30 acres of agricultural land and at least a dozen buffaloes, posed a question: “What do you think is more important – life or money?”
It was a sudden philosophical turn in the conversation. Until then, we had been discussing sugarcane prices and the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s failure to ensure farmers like Singh received the state-advised rate for their produce from sugar processing mills in time.
The Jat farmer, in his sixties, yet athletic in frame, proceeded to answer the question himself. “Nothing is more important than the safety of our families,” he said. “My biradari (community) may be upset with them now – I am hurt too – but this government has been able to do what no one else has: they have ended crime.”
The very next day, in neighbouring Shamli district, a conversation with a group of Dalit Jatav men threw up yet another spontaneous reference to apradh, the Hindi word for crime.
First, one of them made a forecast: “If the elections are fair, it is game over for the BJP in western UP next year.”
The men were open...
