When he came to India from Sydney in Australia in October for personal work, and took a break from his job in the information technology industry there, Bhavjit Singh had no plans to stay longer.
But the Ludhiana IT professional from Punjab is here in December, running a Twitter campaign to confront those who spread “fake news and run smear campaigns” against the ongoing farmers’ protest.
The Twitter account, Tractor2twitr, has garnered 2.5 million impressions worldwide since November 28.
Farmers’ protest at multiple entry points to the national capital began on November 26, driven mainly by food producers from Punjab and Haryana.
“I had come to India at the end of October to take care of personal work, but then this (the farmers’ protest) happened and I stayed,” says Bhavjit Singh.
He said his idea was to spread authentic information about the protest as “many people have been tweeting, carrying out a smear campaign against the movement.”
His friend and volunteer, Jaspreet Singh, says: “Paid and motivated users dominate and invade the Twitter space. Our campaign is an effort to counter them.”
“Farmers don’t know how to operate Twitter. We wanted to connect them to it. We don’t have an IT cell, all tweets are ‘organic’,” he says.
Also, when the international media wants to know what is happening in India, they do not go to Facebook or WhatsApp, but instead log into Twitter to see the trends, adds Bhavjit Singh.
“When the campaign against farmers was at its peak, we thought it was time for farmers to move from tractor to Twitter. The mango name, tractor2twtr, came out of nowhere,” he says.
Bhavjit Singh says that the Twitter account is being operated by volunteers from all over the world. “Everyone is an administrator.”
Posts on the identifier receive more than a lakh of retweets daily on average, he says.
“We have consolidated our power, our presence on Twitter. Now, we are giving a tough battle to those who run a smear campaign,” he says.
Farmers, especially from Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting at the Delhi borders against the 2020 Farmers’ Agricultural Price Assurance and Services (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement; the Trade in Agricultural Products and Trade (Promotion and Facilitation) Act of 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020.
They are on a one-day fast on Monday, even as the unrest spread to different parts of the country with peasant unions holding demonstrations at the district headquarters.
Enacted in September, the three agricultural laws have been projected by the central government as major reforms in the agricultural sector that will eliminate middlemen and allow farmers to sell anywhere in the country.
However, protesting farmers have expressed fears that the new laws would pave the way to remove the Minimum Livelihood Price safety cushion and wipe out the mandis, leaving them at the mercy of large corporations.
.
