Sept 6, 2021: Tens of thousands of India’s farmers rallied near the capital on Sunday, vowing to stand up to the government over controversial agricultural laws, saying their livelihoods would be ruined.

According to the local police, more than 500,000 farmers attended Sunday’s rally in India’s Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district, men and women wore yellow and green scarves waving flags of the national and farmers’ unions marking the harvest and mustard fields.

An umbrella body representing farmers’ unions said people from 15 of India’s states were present.

India’s Modi government says the industry is largely inefficient and needs reform. But protesters fear that laws that outlaw the sector will leave them at the mercy of big corporations.

Several rounds of talks between the government and ministers failed to resolve differences. About two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion population derives its livelihood from agriculture and the sector has long been a political minefield.

Prominent farmers’ leader Rakesh Tikait said Uttar Pradesh, a predominantly agricultural state with a population of 240 million, would breathe new life into the protest movement. “We will go to every city and town in Uttar Pradesh and send the message that Modi’s government is anti-farmer,” he said.

Over the past eight months, tens of thousands of farmers have taken to the streets of the capital, New Delhi, to protest against the law, in protest against the government by India’s longest-running farmers.

The measures, introduced last September, allow India’s farmers to sell their produce directly to large buyers outside government-regulated wholesale markets. The government says this will make it difficult for farmers and help them get better prices.

One of the biggest challenges for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is that farmers have been camping on Delhi’s borders since late November. Farmers and union leaders reiterated at the rally that they would fight for their rights and continue to sit on major highways as far as Delhi until the law is repealed.

Farmers in India say the legislation will hurt their livelihoods and leave them bargaining power against large private retailers and food processors. Agriculture is a vast sector that accounts for about half of India’s over 1.3 billion population and about 15 percent of the country’s $2.7 trillion economy.

Another farmer leader, Balbir Singh Rajewal, said Sunday’s rally was a warning to Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which hopes to win power in India’s Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections early next year and that the response to the farmers’ protest will be a barometer of the government’s success.

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