This webinar was held on 27 February 2021
Listen to the recording on our YouTube channel here
See the webinar summary below
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Webinar Summary
What is the connection between the ongoing farmer protests and the arrests of scholars and civic activists in India? Farmers' unions agitating against three farm laws have notably also raised their voices demanding the release of numerous intellectuals and civic activists, arrested under the 'Unlawful Activities Prevention Act'. Several of those arrested have been actively involved in struggles of the landless and rural poor, and have been vocal in their opposition to India's increasingly increasingly authoritarian, pro-corporate and casteist modes of governance. This webinar brings together scholars and farmers to discuss how the process of corporatisation undermines education and agriculture in similar ways. It will reflect on the caste dimensions of the protests, and how academics, farmers and agricultural workers can forge solidarities in times of dispossession and crises.
Our guest speakers
Harinder Kaur 'Bindu', President, Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) Women's Wing, India. Harinder has been working tirelessly to organise and educate, in particular women in Punjab about the wide ramifications and intended impact of the farms laws
Vijoo Krishnan, All India Joint Secretary, All India Kisan Sabha, India. Vijoo is a writer on agrarian issues and also a central committee member of Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a key organiser of Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan
Surinder Jodhka, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. Surinder has written extensively on agrarian structures and change, as well as caste politics in India
Shreya Sinha, Research Associate, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Shreya works on the political economy of development and agrarian change in India
Our moderator
Ashok Kumbamu, Sociologist and editorial board member, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
This webinar is co-hosted by InSAF India, Ambedkar King Study Circle (California), Scholars At Risk, the British Association for South Asian Studies, and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam, The Forum on Education in Asia (UCL), and the SIU University Honors Program