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SINGHU, India, Jan 4: In a showdown between the barn farmers of North India and the government that has convulsed the country, farmers have a 21st-century ally: a handful of supporters spread across the globe with a Twitter user.
Farmers have shut down some of the traffic in and out of New Delhi, protesting recent farm laws that they fear will eventually remove the government-guaranteed minimum prices for their crops.
But the protesters, many of them from the Sikh religious minority, say they are also fighting a social media campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP labels some of the protesters as separatists from the giant multi-ethnic nation, an accusation the protesters call disinformation.
Bhavjit Singh perked up for battle in November from his room in Ludhiana in the agricultural state of Punjab, where he watched with dismay the online attacks on farmers.
With some friends, the information technology professional launched the @ Tractor2twitr Twitter account in late November. The following month, he traveled to the central site of the protest on a main highway connecting Haryana state and Delhi, the territory that includes the capital.
Thousands of people have jammed the road for miles with tractors, trailers and tents, sleeping in makeshift shacks and cooking in ramshackle kitchens.
Singh, 38, joined the protesters with two smartphones.
“We will intensify our campaign because now we are organizing and getting more support,” Singh told Reuters, speaking near the noisy protest site where open kitchens served mid-morning snacks. “Our war of perception, the war of courier goes in the right direction.”
The account, with more than 23,000 followers, promotes its message by boosting one hashtag a day. Recently one day, #FarmersDyingModiEnjoying, powered by @ Tractor2twitr, was among the best hashtags on Indian Twitter, battling #ModiWithFarmers.
Thirteen thousand kilometers (8,000 miles) away in Houston, Texas, Baljinder Singh is part of the core group that helps manage the account.
The BJP “was targeting us, so we felt we had to respond to them,” the owner of a couple of 7-Eleven stores in the United States told Reuters. “We are all sons and daughters of farmers.”
Baljinder and Bhavjit Singh, who share a common Sikh surname, are not related.
@ Tractor2twitr has joined a union group called Farmers Unity Front (Kisan Ekta Morcha) in recent weeks, which has created accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Snapchat, with 50 volunteers, which have increased to hundreds of thousands of followers.
Manipulated media
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Farmers are demanding that Modi repeal all three farm laws, enacted in September, which they say could make them vulnerable to retail giants like Walmart Inc and Reliance Industries of India.
The government says the laws, which allow producers to bypass government-regulated wholesale markets and sell directly to buyers, are a reform that gives farmers more options. It has tried to assure farmers that the guaranteed price system will not be dismantled.
As farmers moved towards Delhi in late 2020, a wave of misinformation began to spread online, said Rajneil Kamath, editor of the fact-checking website Newschecker.
Old and unrelated images and videos, including some of demonstrations outside India calling for an independent Sikh homeland, posed as representatives of farmers, Kamath said.
In December, Twitter marked a tweet from the head of the BJP’s vast social media team, Amit Malviya, as “rigged media,” saying that a video he posted showing an elderly protester narrowly avoiding a police beating had been edited misleading.
BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga says the party has been legitimately highlighting that people other than farmers, including Sikh separatists, had potentially infiltrated the protests.
“We believe that some people are trying to hijack the movement,” Bagga said.
At the protest site, Ammy Gill, a 25-year-old lyricist from Punjab, splits his time helping out in community kitchens and reporting the protests on social media.
“The goal of our messages on social media is to counter trolls and the campaign against farmers,” Gill said.
“We are not here to have a picnic.” – Reuters
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