NEW DELHI — Mewa Singh
said he wasn’t going anywhere.
On Monday afternoon, Mr.
Singh, who farms a small plot of
land in northern India, sat in the
back of a mud-splattered farm
trailer, heaps of rice, lentils, fresh
garlic and spices piled around
him, blocking one of the main ar-
teries into India’s capital.
Part of an army of thousands of
angry farmers who have encircled
New Delhi, Mr. Singh vowed to
keep protesting for however long
it takes for India’s government,
led by Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, to reverse recently passed
pro-market agricultural policies.
“Our land is our mother,” said
Mr. Singh, growing emotional as
he talked about the new policies,
which he saw as part of an effort to
hand farmers’ land over to big
business. “It was passed on to us
from our parents, who got it from
their parents, and now Modi
wants to acquire it and give it
away to his rich friends.”
Even though Mr. Modi’s politi-
cal party firmly controls the gov-
ernment, the growing farmers’ re-
bellion seems to have rattled his
administration. In India, more
than 60 percent of the population
depends on agriculture to make a
living. Farmers are a huge politi-
cal constituency.
On Sunday, Mr. Modi’s top lieu-
tenants hastily called a late-night
meeting, and they have told the
farmers that they were willing to
negotiate.
But the crisis, which has
snarled traffic leading into New
Delhi for miles and cast a sense of
uncertainty over the capital, has
become a classic standoff of who
lays down their arms first.
The Modi administration has in-
dicated that it will not talk to the
protesting farmers unless they
move to a fairground on New Del-
hi’s outskirts and stop blocking
the highways.
But the farmers have said that
they will not move their tractors
or trailers until negotiations start.
They are digging in, resupplying
themselves with food, fuel, fire-
wood and medical supplies to stay
put for weeks.
“Now we have leverage,” said
Ramandeep Singh Mann, a farm-
ers’ rights activist, who gazed
across the protest zone on Mon-
day afternoon with a look of pride.
“If we go to those fairgrounds, we
will lose it.”
Many of the farmers, like Mr.
Singh and Mr. Mann, hail from
Punjab state, and they’re so furi-
ous at Mr. Modi that they have
spent the past four days chugging
hundreds of miles across northern
India in their tractors, pulling con-
crete police barriers out of their
way, weathering tear gas and wa-
ter cannons, and curling up in
blankets during the cold nights in
the back of their trailers parked
end to end for several miles.
The border of New Delhi and
the neighboring state of Haryana,
where countless motorists flow
through every day, now resembles
a siege.
Bands of farmers kept march-
ing in on Monday carrying the col-
ored banners of their farmers’ un-
ions hoisted on long wooden poles
like an 18th-century army step-
ping onto a battlefield.
The field kitchens that had been
set up to sustain the protesters
were of a stunning scale and only
growing. Around noon, a bunch of
older men with long beards and
thick hands scooped onions into
an enormous steel pot the size of a
bathtub, preparing lunch.
Many farmers said the new
rules, which the Modi administra-
tion pushed through Parliament
in September, are the beginning of
the end of a decades-old system
that had guaranteed minimum
prices for certain crops. They al-
low farmers greater freedom to
sell their produce outside state-
controlled agricultural markets,
but they also curtail farmers’ abil-
ity to challenge disputes in courts.
While the Modi administration
has said that India’s farm policies
need to be reformed to attract
more investment, farmers say
they were never consulted on the
changes.
Several who were interviewed
on Monday spoke of their fear of
being swallowed up by corporate
titans such as Mukesh D. Ambani,
India’s richest man, and Gautam
Adani, who is not far behind, both
known to be close to Mr. Modi.
Mr. Modi has tried to calmthings down, saying in a radio ad-
dress on Sunday that the new poli-
cies “opened the doors to new pos-
sibilities” for farmers.
Farmers have been opposed to
the changes from the very begin-
ning. They see the laws as an at-
tack on their identity and a means
to fundamentally alter the way
they have been farming for gener-
ations. The first protests started
in July, in Haryana and in Punjab.
Many economists and agricul-
tural experts support the farmers’
demand for a minimum assured
price for their crops.
“There is no evidence in the
world where the market price has
benefited farmers,” said Devinder
Sharma, an independent agricul-
tural expert and author based inthe northern city of Chandigarh.
On Monday, squads of riot po-
lice and paramilitary officers car-
rying assault rifles huddled be-
hind barricades on the Delhi side
of the border, but their orders
were not to intervene, for the mo-
ment. They simply sat on a road
divider, watching the crowd build.
The farmers’ original plan had
been to march on the center of
New Delhi, the seat of Mr. Modi’s
power, and many seemed disap-
pointed that they had been pre-
vented from doing that.
“When we started our march,
we felt we were going to ourcapi-
tal,” said Amrinder Singh, a young
farmer who was wearing an Adi-
das tracksuit. “But they treated us
like terrorists.”Some members of Mr. Modi’s
political party and their allies in
right-wing news channels have
branded the protesting farmers
“anti-national,” an increasingly
common swipe at anyone who
criticizes the Modi government.
This was the same charge many
of Mr. Modi’s supporters levied
against protesters who spoke out
last year and earlier this year
against a contentious new citizen-
ship law that blatantly discrimi-
nated against Muslims. Those
protests were much bigger and
spread across the country.
But the scene at Delhi’s bor-
ders, where tens of thousands of
farmers and their supporters
have been demonstrating at sev-
eral road junctions, resembled thecitizenship protests in spirit: the
combative anti-Modi speeches,
the growing crowds and the
countless volunteers passing out
food to keep things going.
Mewa Singh, 57, had traveled to
Delhi in the back of a bumpy
trailer along with two dozen men
from his village in Punjab. They
all insisted that they were just try-
ing to exercise their democratic
voice.
“I’m not going to say this isn’t
tough, it is tough,” Mr. Singh said.
The nights were cold, he said,
and he was losing money every
day by not working on his small
wheat farm.
“But if a child doesn’t cry,” he
said, “how will his mother know
he’s hungry?”Thousands Block Roads to India’s Capital in a Protest of Farm Policies
This article is by Jeffrey Gettle-
man, Karan Deep Singhand Hari
Kumar.
DANISH SIDDIQUI/REUTERSDANISH SIDDIQUI/REUTERSANUSHREE FADNAVIS/REUTERS
Tens of thousands of farmers, many of whom have traveled hundreds of miles in tractors and trailers, have been blockading high-
ways into New Delhi. They say they won’t give in until the government negotiates changes to new pro-market agricultural laws.A16 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020
WELLINGTON, New Zealand
— Almost one year to the day after
a deadly volcanic eruption killed
22 people on New Zealand’s White
Island, the country’s workplace
safety regulator has charged a
number of organizations and indi-
viduals for their roles in the disas-
ter.
In a televised address on Mon-
day, Phil Parkes, the chief execu-
tive of the regulator, WorkSafe,
said that the 13 parties — includ-
ing organizations, government
agencies and three individuals —
had fallen short of their obliga-
tions and would face charges in
court.
“This deeply tragic event was
unexpected, but that does not
mean it was unforeseeable, and
there is a duty on operators to pro-
tect those in their care,” Mr.
Parkes said. “The victims — both
workers and visitors — all had a
reasonable expectation that they
could go to the island knowing
that those organizations involved
had done all they were required to
do to look after their health and
safety.”
The organizations face criminal
charges with maximum fines of
1.5 million New Zealand dollars,
about $1 million, while the three
individuals face charges as offi-
cers of a company and maximum
fines of about $210,000 for their
roles in the disaster. The first
hearing is scheduled for Dec. 15.
The charges are unusual: Un-
der the government-run system of
no-fault accident compensation,
known as the Accident Compensa-
tion Corporation scheme, people
in New Zealand generally have lit-
tle legal recourse in the event of an
accident caused by negligence, no
matter how serious the event.Though the 13 entities have not
been publicly named by Work-
Safe, two government agencies,
GNS Science and the National
Emergency Management Agency,
have confirmed they are among
those charged. GNS Science mon-itors volcanic activity. If found to
be liable, the two agencies will pay
any fines to the government, ulti-
mately passing the cost on to tax-
payers.
The volcano, also known by its
Maori name, Whakaari, eruptedon Dec. 9 last year. At the time, 47
people, including tour groups and
their guides, were on the island,
seeking a glimpse of the raw edge
of New Zealand’s geological activ-
ity. Those caught in the disaster
included children and retirees.In the wake of the catastrophe,
some asked why these tourists
had been allowed to visit the site
of an active volcano. Volcanolo-
gists had long warned that White
Island might be a disaster waiting
to happen, while GeoNet, the
agency that monitors geological
activity in New Zealand, had re-
ported increased activity in the
weeks leading up to the eruption,
raising its warning level to 2 out of
a possible 5.
Tours to the remote island have
since been suspended, despite
calls to resume them under new
safety protocols.
At the time of the eruption,
tours were run under a deal be-
tween the family that owns the is-
land and a few operators, falling
under the jurisdiction of so-called
adventure activities regulations
that require a safety audit for
companies that “deliberately ex-
pose the participant to a serious
risk to his or her health and safety
that must be managed by the
provider of the activity.”Regulator Files Charges
In New Zealand Eruption
That Left 22 People Dead
By NATASHA FROSTThe volcano on White Island
erupted last Dec. 9. Thirteen
parties, including agencies and
three people, face charges.MICHAEL SCHADE, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS