The ninth day of August is celebrated internationally as the day of World's Indigenous People and the protection & promotion of their rights. What became ironic is that the same day in the most paradoxical year this generation has faced so far, farmers, predominantly from the regions of Haryana & Punjab took to protest against the three farm acts passed by the Indian Parliament on 27th September 2020.

As per the government, the essential provisions of the legislation are aimed to help the marginal farmers by allowing them to sell their produce outside the APMC ‘mandis’. This would erode the role of the 'commission agents', make transportation cheaper and ensure fair competition by further allowing them to enter into contracts with multi-national organizations. Stock-holding limits on items such as cereals and pulses would be removed except under circumstances like war or natural disaster. However, what comes as a fear to the farming community is the entry of the corporates, end of subsidized electricity and that these laws would disassemble the minimum support price system. The farmers are wary of socialist practices possessed by a capitalist approach.

#FarmersProtest eventually became a trending topic on social media. To gather further support, a Ludhiana based IT professional initiated a campaign with the hashtag #Tractor2Twitter which became a top trend and gathered substantial amount of impressions on social media platforms. What followed was a series of accusations aimed directly against the government.

To counter the ever growing allegations, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) along with the defenders of the farm bill decided to elucidate the provisions and form a counternarrative with a hashtag #FarmActsGameChanger. This comes as an effective technique of media management to reach out to the people who were unsupportive of the government's approach. @BJP4India took to twitter promoting and simplyfying the provisions on the fateful december morning of #BharatBandh called by the protesting farmers.

#FarmActsGameChanger declares the  Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill of 2020 as the game changer and a boon for the agricultural sector of the India which dominates 15.96 % of the GDP (Source: theglobaleconomy.com)

A detailed analysis of the protagonist of the ruling government, the honorable Prime Minister, on checkbrand.online shows that the negative sentiments have surpassed the positive ones while the majority of them remaining neutral. The downward leap in the digital ranking can be attributed to the recent agitations in the northern parts of the country. Therefore, to ensure its brand value, the ruling party had to initiate a series of narratives favoring the legislation.

Thousands of supporters with hashtags #FarmActsGameChanger along with  #HarSheherChaluHai took to twitter blaming the anti-establishment media and the communist ideology behind the deception regarding the recently implemented laws.

The Minister of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar also appealed to his followers to curb the spread of misinformation under the hashtag #FarmActsGameChanger.

(Video link: https://twitter.com/i/status/1336163153323851776). Similarly, Shobha Karandlaje, the Vice-President of BJP Karnataka tweeted a clipping from a debate conducted on Times Now in which Professor & Author Anand Ranganathan, exposed the hypocrisy and vested interests behind the protests. (Video Link: https://twitter.com/i/status/1336197196945879042)

While the twitterati seems to be obsessed and busy with arguments and contentions on these protests, one can only hope that the situation would restore to normalcy and that the notion of social justice embibed in our constitution would be preserved.