QRap: The Farmers’ March of March

Video Editor: Vivek Gupta

What did the farmers have to go through, to have to walk for over a 100 miles? What was it they wanted, from the government, and from the people, to have marched as a silent army of 35,000?

Here’s the What, Who and Why of it, in rap verses:

The March of March

100 miles, 30,000 farmers, 60,000 feet
and a million blisters burning on the soles of each.
65, 45, 11, baby boomers, silent, xennials
millennials Gen Y and Z.
From Nashik to Mumbai, they walked
for all the world to see.

Farmers armed with scars on their hands and lines on their cheeks.
Children scraping hot tar with their bare feet.
What did they want? What was their need?
Who listened? And what were they here to teach?

Did they rise, rise, rise up to the moment?
Not the farmers, silly, I meant the government.

Loan waivers, a promise that they failed to keep.
Now they say yes, when the media went wide and deep.

To the Adivasi's right to his land
Now it's a Yes after they fought and begged with all their might.

Gives 'em a reason to sleep.

It’s twelve years late, like an afterthought, right?
Recognition of forest rights act, writing on the sand?

There’s mouths to feed, land to till
till the sun sets on the window sill.

There’s a need to seed the mind to be still
and let it heed the growing mill.
Of voices waiting to be heard;
the cry of a collective will.

And so the farmers marched, and now they believe
that the Fadnavis government will, their troubles relieve.
Is this true, will it happen? Only time will tell.
But right now, Indian farmers are living a kind of hell.

Unseasonal rains? Check
Unfair market? Check
Hunger, poverty, anti-farmer tweets?
Check, check, check double check.