PM’s warning

Prime Minister Imran Khan repeated a warning for India and a 'heads-up' for the rest of the world — Pakistan will give a "befitting response" to any Indian "false-flag operation". Imran's warning follows several days of Pakistani officials speaking about the threat of an Indian operation designed to divert attention from the "internal mess" that the Narendra Modi-led government has gotten itself into. And what a mess it is. Leave aside Modi's horrifically cruel policies in occupied Kashmir. Leave aside the attacks on civilians and even UN observers across the Line of Control. Leave aside his failed Covid-19 response. Leave aside the crony capitalism that has become a hallmark of his government. The ongoing farmers' protests alone are enough to bring down most governments.

The protests are against new policy proposals that small farmers feel will let big corporations gobble them up and deprive them of their livelihoods at a time when urban workers rendered jobless by Covid-19 are being forced to return to farming. It also ties into the fact that while most countries see a transition to manufacturing as the dominant labour employing sector as their economies develop, India has not done so. This is largely due to the Modi government's poorly-crafted economic policies, which went all-in on the tech sector. Technology is a famously low employment generator, meaning that good jobs for low-education workers were already few and far between before Covid-19.

When the economy tanked after the pandemic began, farming was a buffer for people returning to their villages. Hitting farmers meant people who suffered through the pandemic felt they were being punched down again. It is true that even Indian farmers agree that the sector needs reforms to make it more productive and less reliant on the government. But this is not the way. The current reforms involved no input from farmers, and it shows. They were only designed to further enrich Modi's wealthy corporate backers. Modi did not expect backlash because he thought his Hindutva policies would be enough to maintain support in most rural areas. But not all farmers are Hindu nationalists, and even if they were bigots, they need to eat too.