Editor’s Pick

ON 25 OCTOBER 1988, around half a million farmers from western Uttar Pradesh marched into Delhi and occupied the lawns of the Boat Club. They had been mobilised by the Bharatiya Kisan Union, led at the time by Mahendra Singh Tikait, and had a 35-point charter of demands, including higher prices for sugarcane, lower tariffs on water and electricity, and a waiver of existing dues. What was meant to be a one-day demonstration lasted for a week, with the farmers camping in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi, from Vijay Chowk to India Gate. They brought their charpoys and buffaloes, set up bonfires, played chaupar and smoked hookahs as they waited for the government to respond.

The BKU had been resurrected in 1987, to fill the political vacuum left after the death of the Jat leader and former prime minister Charan Singh. It began agitating against a rise in the power tariff and the erratic supply of electricity during the harvest time. After the Uttar Pradesh government insisted that farmers pay their electricity bills by 31 January 1988, Tikait led a gherao of the divisional commissioner’s office at Meerut. The state government refused to concede their demands, though the chief minister at the time, Vir Bahadur Singh, invited the BKU for talks in Lucknow. Vir Bahadur was replaced as the chief minister in June, and Tikait instead decided to march on Delhi—which was much closer than the state capital—shortly before the winter session of parliament.

The Rajiv Gandhi-led union government, in power at the time, cut off food and water supply to the site and played loud music through the night to unsettle the farmers and their cattle. Having achieved a symbolic victory by forcing the Congress to relocate a rally to commemorate Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the farmers dispersed. Shortly before the 1989 general election, the new UP chief minister, ND Tiwari, waived electricity bills for 1987–88.