Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday tweeted an appeal to farmers in various languages to read agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar’s letter to them on the new farm laws, a clear acknowledgement that the protests were gaining traction outside the Punjab-Haryana belt.

Till now, the government’s messaging has largely been in Hindi and Punjabi. Even the written offer of amendments to the three laws, sent to the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha last week, was in Hindi and Punjabi.

Saturday’s tweets went out in all the southern languages too, apart from Bengali, Gujarati and Odia, reflecting the growing footprints of the agitation that has already witnessed participation from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in the siege of Delhi’s borders.

While the government continues with its attempts at persuasion, it seems to also have begun wielding the stick, with 14 big arhtiyas or commission agents in Punjab being raided since Friday.

The protesting farmers see the income-tax raids as an attempt to intimidate them into submission. The raids have drawn stinging criticism from Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh.

The commission agents, whom the government calls middlemen, help farmers sell their produce to buyers — private, government or exporter — besides providing services like unloading the grain, cleaning it, filling it into bags, and weighing, sealing and loading it on trucks for final despatch.

They also provide easy loans to the farmers, and have been participating in the protests out of concern that the new laws would run them out of business.

Late on Saturday evening, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) responded to Tomar’s letter, which defends the new farm laws, point by point.

It also sought to counter the government’s slander campaign against the agitation.

The AIKSCC said it was most upsetting that the authorities were fuelling suspicion about a movement that had been going on peacefully for six months. Before besieging Delhi’s borders from November 26 on the AIKSCC’s call, the farmers had been agitating in their own states, with Punjab’s farmers carrying out the most sustained campaign.
On the government’s persistent charge that the farmers were being misled by the Opposition, the AIKSCC underlined that it was the farmers’ movement, instead, that had forced several political parties to change their position on the new farm laws.

On BJP leaders’ accusation that the farmers’ protest was not in the national interest, the AIKSCC said: “Our country is still largely an agrarian one. Are you saying that the welfare of farmers is not in national interest, and their voice should not be heard? Or is it your case that only the development of big corporate and foreign companies is in national interest.”

On Saturday, Hanuman Beniwal, Rajasthan MP and leader of BJP ally Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, announced he would lead a march to Delhi on December 26 in support of the farmers’ agitation.

His decision comes at a time farmers of Maharashtra are gearing to march from Nashik to Delhi under the aegis of the All India Kisan Sabha, reviving memories of the Kisan Long March from the same district to Mumbai in March 2018.

“It seems the central government is in the mood to quell the farmers’ protest,” Beniwal said after resigning his memberships of three parliamentary committees in solidarity with the farmers.

“Hence, our party has decided to lead a march of two lakh farmers and youths towards Delhi from Rajasthan on December 26,” the MP for Nagaur, who has not announced a departure from the NDA, added.

Senior BJP leader from Haryana and a former union minister Birender Singh, who had left the Congress to join the BJP in 2014, broke ranks and has extended support to the farmers’ protest. Singh is the grandson of the pre-Independence peasant leader Sir Chhotu Ram and was associated with the Congress for over four decades. He has not yet severed links with the BJP.

“Whatever I have achieved in politics would not have been possible had I not been the grandson of Sir Chhotu Ram,” Singh said on Friday. “Therefore, it is my moral responsibility to stand with the farmers in their fight today. I have decided to support this (farmers’) fight,” said Singh.