April 14, 2021 • 57 mins
As the protests over India's Farm Bills continues, multiple groups argue there's a conspiracy afoot. Many protestors believe the government is selling them out to corporations. Members of the media claim the protests are a cover for a separatist movement -- or that foreign intelligence agencies are riling up the crowds as a way of destabilizing India. Tune in as Ben and Matt separate the conspiratorial fact from fiction in the second part of this two-part series.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt Noel is on an important mission today,
they called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is part two in our
series on the massive farm protests that are ongoing in
(00:49):
India as we record, and Matt, you know, as you
and I had discussed in our earlier episode, a lot
of people in the West are not very familiar you're
with the situation, and I think a lot of people
have been confused by what seemed to be competing narratives
about what this is, how it came about, and what
(01:10):
the protesters want. Would you agree? And that's what this
part two episode is about, going through these competing narratives.
If you have not listened to part one yet, we
recommend you do that first before listening to this episode
because there's a ton of info in there that you're
gonna need to have locked away before we jumping everything today.
(01:30):
We definitely had to, so much so that we we
spent an entire episode doing that making sure that we
also understood. Uh. Here are the facts for a quick
and dirty recap, um Matt. This all hinges officially on
(01:52):
three incredibly unpopular new laws, new acts, the farm bills,
and you and I went into detail about what those do,
what they're meant to do, and why so very many
people hate them. Not everybody, but a lot of people
hate them. And ironically enough, the people who don't care
(02:14):
for these farm bills, that people who are protesting are
the very same people that these bills, in theory are
meant to help. It's about the long and short of it,
I think it is. And this is where it gets
a little murky. It's important to know that there are
many organizations and companies, private entities that really appreciate what's
(02:36):
going on with these bills. There are many people, individuals,
families that are very much not okay with it. But
we also have to take into account the organizations that
are fairly large that represent many of the individuals in
this story. Yeah, because there is not just one farmer
union farmers union in India, there are many and they
(03:00):
don't always agree. And what we found in our previous episode,
we examined a little bit about the intention of those laws,
what the critics saw as the consequences of those laws,
the negative effects that would occur, either through incompetence or
(03:21):
design on the government's part. And UH, the the one
thing you can say if first off, as we said
in last episode, thank you to all our listeners in India,
thank you to all our folks in the Indian diaspora
who wrote in to give us, to give us their
perspectives here, which are crucial. But the one thing that
(03:44):
I think we can all agree on, even if you
have wildly contradicting views of the farm protest, the Modi
government was super sketchy getting this stuff passed in a
way that does not look good. That's exactly what I
wanted to say. A major takeaway should be that these
laws got pushed through quickly with very little input or
(04:07):
no input from the people and organizations that they affect,
at least that we're aware of, and that has been
reported in the news. And maybe there were some organizations
you know, UH looked to for advice, but they weren't
the the farmers, right, yeah, exactly. And you know that's
(04:28):
a question that I was thinking about this earlier. Man.
That's that's a question that's similar to what we asked
in our episode on Davos and the Great Reset. Like, Okay,
even if you know you're let's see, your intentions are
absolutely sincere and you want to help, uh, you know,
a given population, then why is that population not in
(04:49):
the room when you're having these conversations about their future.
It's a very it's a very very good question. So
right now as we're recording this, we're pretty excited because
as we held off a lot of the juicy stuff
for for this episode specifically, I see, we just jumped
into it. If if you are also because if you're
(05:11):
also excited, match, we why why delay? Huh Yeah, let's
let's jump right into this thing. Let's uh, let's god,
I was gonna say, let's whip out the old collistoni hand.
What does that mean? We'll tell you. Here's where it
gets crazy. Corruption and conspiracy. The accusations, As we mentioned earlier,
(05:35):
the accusations are rife. They're coming from virtually every side.
It is not hyperbolic to say, millions of folks believe
there's something they don't want you to know about these
protests and these laws. The problem is that not everyone
agrees on who exactly they are. And that's where we
(05:56):
get to this quite provocative claim um from members of
India's domestic media, and from members of some regional media
outlets outside of India, and from some of our fellow
listeners who wrote in to say that these protests, however
they may have began, have been co opted in a
(06:18):
very real way. And you know, Matt, you and I said,
we pointed out that you can find news clips of
plenty of protesters, farmers talking and interviews and saying, look,
the media is misrepresenting our cause they're lying to you
about us to discredit us. Uh, the same way that
(06:43):
you would see protesters from various things here in the
US say the same thing, right, there would be people
at various domestic protests saying, um, agent provocateurs are in
the crowd, right or uh or the walls in the
case of Occupy, the Wall Street run media is purposefully
(07:06):
trying to discredit our movement and make it seem bad,
which I think to a degree was absolutely true in
that case. Yeah, well, you really just have to follow,
follow the money, really, follow the influence of you know,
a large media organization, and what are the strings that
(07:26):
can pull that organization, because there are there always are
some uh, no matter how objective a media organization wants
to be. Um well except for this one, of course.
Oh boy, they've got so many They've got so many
strings in us like today, Uh today, I'm recording in
(07:48):
our studio, in our bunker, which is why if you're
watching this on video, I'm just sort of a float.
I'm floating in the darkness with a microphone. And the
whole reason I came in, man, is because there's a
place downstairs that makes these amazing case it is and
I was it's true. It's true. Uh, that same place
(08:12):
makes even better burritos. I'm just putting that out there.
I know. But you're a burrito guy, I mean, case
a guy. There's nothing there's nothing wrong with having these
differences and segue. I'm joking, of course, by the way,
I'm I'm making light of of of the media thing.
I'm sorry to put that out No, are you kidding?
(08:35):
More burritos for you, my friend? I just can't handle
like the thing is. And it depends on where you
live a course, But in the part of the US
where Matt and I reside, there's this tendency to have
these hugely over stuffed burritos. You're getting you're getting a
tortilla log right, Can you eat a whole burrito of
(08:56):
that size? Matt generally no, but it gives me two meals, which, hey,
if I'm going to pay for one and get to
I accept. It's true that is an advantage of the burritos.
A casey is modular, though by design. I feel like
I'm getting us off track. I am sorry, You're absolutely right.
Let's see, uh segue. We're talking about differences, and when
(09:19):
we're talking about the conspiracies related to the farm protests,
what we have to remember is that we are looking
at a recent event that did not occur in a vacuum.
It is a flashpoint for some complex, at times difficult
to understand tensions and differences that already existed in some
(09:41):
cases for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Uh.
And it might seem strange to say, well, these kind
of relatively dry laws that were enacted recently or were
passed recently and then suspended. What what on earth could
they have to do with these uh, very old conflicts
(10:01):
and resentments. It's weird because you mentioned a phrase right
before everything went crazy, that a Kalistani hand. What that
is such a cool phrase, but what does it mean? Well,
we're gonna have to jump into it and explore it.
In the way we get into that is to talk
about some allegations that were made or a statement at
(10:21):
least that was made on Z News. This is an
outlet in India. There's a reporter there, suld Hear Schaudry
made the statement that the protests that are occurring right
now with the farmers protesting these bills might be cover
for something completely different. Has nothing to do actually with
(10:42):
the farming situation and the bills, that there might be
this thing a quote Kalistani hand powering the chaos that
is being seen in Delhi and in several other places
across India. So Kalistani hand. Let's just let's just answer it.
I feel weird. It's a cool phrasing. We want to
put it on a T shirt or something, even though
(11:02):
it's probably not something you want to put on a
T shirt. It just feels cool. Yeah, it might be Yeah,
we don't it might be kind of offensive. Yes. Uh.
This is another one of those things that we mentioned
in part one of this episode that is just not
going to exist for the for the most part, in
the Western world's nomenclature, in in the Western world's understanding. Um,
(11:27):
so we have to kind of jump to history to
really really fully look at this. So the Kalistani hand
refers to a movement called the Kaliston movement, and we've
discussed a little bit of this group before. The Seek
the Sikh religion, and there's a Seek separatist initiative that
(11:47):
wants to create sovereign land for for seeks, for these
seeks in the Punjab region, which is one of the
regions that is heavily affected by these farming rules or
these arming laws, because there's a ton of farmland out
there and a lot of the population in Punjab, they
make a lot of their money or most of their money,
(12:09):
if not all of their money through farming. Yeah. So
people in the Western world I think are aware of
uh Sikhs or Sikhism and have you know, the odds
are pretty likely that you have met someone who practices
this religion. It was founded in the fifteen century in Punjab,
(12:30):
in the Punjab area of India, So it makes sense
that the geographic homeland of this religion would be the
place where uh members of the Khalistan movement would want
their new sovereign state to be. The issue is that
(12:51):
obviously existing states like Pakistan and India don't want to
give up land, as we said earlier, maybe listener mail
or something that's generally something that other countries are not
down to do. So the Colista movement starts kind of
in opposition to the status quo. It's been around since
(13:15):
at least the nineteen eighties in this modern form, but
the overall idea of creating a sovereign state for practitioners
of the Seikh religion started way like dates back to
the fall of the British Empire. And of course this
is the part where we say you can't discriminate against
(13:36):
an entire religion. I mean, when you get down to it,
you know, nobody's really monolithic, right, No group of people
is super monolithic. There are always going to be individual
opinions and differences in values, and so to be very clear,
it is not as though every member of the Seek
(13:57):
religion is calling for the creation of this new state.
But there are people who believe that SEEK separatist in
the Kalistani movement have co opted the farming protest at
some point and are pushing it, escalating it further than
(14:18):
it would have gone normally. And they will argue that
the farm bill itself is only a token cause of
performative flagged wave and that the real aim of the
protest is to use them as an opportunity to gain
leverage in the fight for an independent Kalistan. Now, even
if this is the first time you have heard that concept,
(14:40):
does it not sound a little complicated? Does that sound
a look like a little Rube Goldberg esque? Yeah, it
sounds very complicated. But there are some nuances we should
discuss here. And the first is that we may be
dealing with coinciding interests here where it may be the cause,
(15:01):
you know, the farm bills, maybe the main cause to protest,
but it could also be beneficial to continue protesting into
to get leverage. It may be beneficial for that, but
I mean, I can't see that being the reason. As
we said before, it's there. The people who are protesting
are are likely very likely going to be affected by
(15:23):
these bills, even if they are a part of the
Kaliston movement. So it's tough, it's tough to really pass
through what's what there um And it could also be
this is I don't want to speak too out of
turn here because I don't know all of the details,
but it could be that the farm bills are in
(15:44):
some way another thing that would bolster the position against
the Coalistan movement from India's perspective. I see, so it
could be seen, you know, by the Colliston movement as
like making move was against them. So I I don't
know all the details, but I can just imagine those
scenarios as well. Yeah, that's a really good point. Coinciding interest,
(16:08):
we do know that times of high tension can make
for strange bedfellows, right, But again, agriculture is huge in
the Punjab region. This is the origin of the religion
known as Sikhism. So these these two ideas have been
(16:30):
together in multiple ways for a very long time. And
we also know, like we said, opportunists can influence the
direction of pre existing movements. This happens all the time.
And just for you know, I was thinking of a
good genre of example, just so people know that we're
(16:51):
not being precious about the US and that we were
very aware that talking about foreign interferences is like throwing
stones from a glasshouse, as the old cliche goes, here's
a good example of how opportunists can influence pre existing movements.
Let's say you're the US and some of your biggest
(17:17):
companies are having problems with a place that they extract
resources or labor from in South right, or Guatemala or
South or Central America Venezuela, right, right, exactly, h and
I mean Chile. Like. Look, we can contually name a
(17:37):
lot of examples. But let's say that's happening, and this
business comes to you as Uncle Sam and says, hey,
we need to keep uh resource here running. And these
crazy people in this country voted for some crazy guy
who's not going to continue selling us these things for
pennies on the dollar. It's time for chase. And they
(18:00):
know what they would actually say, Ben, what they would say,
this guy who's in power now is evil and we
have to defeat him. He's doing the wrong stuff. They
wouldn't mention any of those details. Oh yeah, not the public. No,
in public, it's like, um, well, I'm saying the wouldn't
even mention it to the young folks that they're trying
to recruit. They would, they would ideal, they would make
(18:21):
it an ideological battle. Oh yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, this
is the way you do it. So say that you
want to overthrow a government and you want to put
in usually a far right dictator who will be more
uh compliant with your geopolitical or your corporate goals, usually
which will not be super great for the people who
(18:43):
actually live in that country. So what you do is
you go, you go and find where the domestic disputes
are already simmering. Is there an area that feels like
it could be a breakaway state? Right? Is there something
that could become a flashpoint? And in different cases in
South and Central America, Uh, this could for example, start
(19:07):
at a university, start in higher education, and then suddenly
a group of college kids who have been peacefully protesting,
have been very ideologically driven to one degree or another.
Suddenly someone has put a lot of gas in their tank,
and they inexplicably have some high grade weapons top Dutch
(19:28):
training for somewhere, and they have in now a new
and very specific plan for the revolution that usually involves
opening up trade to global corporations and so on and
so on. That is, that is like an extreme but
provable level of foreign interference. We've also seen accusations you
know of for an interference in various US based protests,
(19:52):
various protests in Europe and so on. The question is
could this be happening here and if it is, could
this be the result of separatist movement interfering. Could it
be the results of maybe even another country like Pakistan interfering.
We don't know. We don't know, but we know that
(20:14):
members of India's mainstream media have put forward this conspiracy,
and they put it forward in definitive terms. But the
thing is, when you talk to the farmers, they'll unequivocally say, no,
this is not the case. We're just we're literally fighting
for our livelihoods and the health and well being of
(20:36):
our community and our descendants. Uh. And furthermore, we are
offended by the media's spin on this. Why aren't you
reporting the real issue, which is the government is trying
to break our chances at a at living a decent life.
And we have other examples that we can point to. Hear,
(21:00):
because as we said August is when these bills were
put forward. In September, I believe is when they were past.
You may have to correct me on that bend, but
I think that's the timeline we're talking about. In um
So in December, there was a post made by OP
India and there's some some staff member there that made
(21:22):
this post and they pointed to several examples on social
media accounts that seemed to demonstrate kind of a back
and forth in messaging or at least almost an on
off messaging messaging that was occurring. So let's just talk
about what it meant. Like one day they would call
for Uhkaliston, like let's establish Kaliston. The next day they
(21:46):
would support farming protests. Or the next day they would
connect the two and say, you know, support Kaliston by
supporting the farming protests. And you know, I don't want
to completely discredit that and say, yeah, okay, whatever, but
there will be some people, no doubt out there that
meet that that rubric. They are they are both supporting
(22:08):
Kaliston and they are supporting the farming protests. Sure, we
remember how many people we were talking about there could
Lord was at one point three billion or something. You
have to imagine in that large of a number of people,
you were going to have many who support both things.
I'm trying to imagine what would be like for me
(22:29):
if I was on social media, which I'm not, but
if I was on social media and I was calling
for some protests and supporting some protests but also simultaneously
supporting UH, I don't know something for Georgia to legalize it.
In Georgia legalized you know it, all of it, whatever
(22:53):
it is. But yeah, I don't know. I on social
media you can say whatever you want, and I get
I get that. OP India is pointing to that as like, look,
here's proof, and in some way it is proof supporting
what they believe, but it's not proof supporting the fact
(23:13):
that the movement has been co opted for some reason
by the Coalistan movement. Yeah, that's an important distinction. And
we also have to remember just like uh those just
like those amazing stories about Amazon Twitter bots, it's not
tough to fake uh an idea or a handle on
(23:34):
Twitter and this. So yeah, there there are questions that
would need to be answered more definitively to prove this
conspiracy was the case. But We also have to point
out again context context, context. This occurs in the context
of a extremely complex relationship between the countries of India
(23:56):
and Pakistan. Cauling a tenses is an under statement. But
with that being said, shout out to their amazing border
opening and closing ceremonies. Just because we we all are
big fans of this clip in this ceremony, let's just
play one one second of it for anyone who hasn't
hurt it. There it is. You've got to see it,
(24:21):
You've gotta you've gotta check this out. I think we've
talked about this on the show before, but Matt, can
you describe a little bit of what's going on here? Sure?
I would describe this as intense posturing, uh military members
from both sides of the border there showing just how
badass they are uh and doing it, you know, in style.
(24:46):
That's how I would put that. UM And it really
is just yeah, it's it's it's a puffing of the chests, like,
don't mess with us, because I I can, I can
step like this. Also, we have all these weapons. Yeah,
there's a lot of there's a lot of ceremony and bravado.
They're um not clip when viral a few years ago,
(25:06):
but it still holds up. It's worth it's worth the
time to see because the reason there's so much ceremony
there and so much pomp and circumstance is because the
border tensions are so high between these two countries, and
so given the enmity between Pakistan and India at times,
(25:26):
it's not surprising that there might be some people living
in India who see these protests as a false front
meant to destabilize their own country in a way that
is somehow advantageous to Pakistan. You know, we're not saying
that everybody believes that by a long stretch, but we're
saying it is a reasonable thing for someone to to
(25:47):
believe that, and so that's that's part one of the problems.
We're gonna pause, though, because there's another conspiracy you need
to hear about, and we'll tell you afterword from our
spawnswers and we're back, Big Moody energy man. The government
(26:11):
is not gonna take this line down. No, they are
not always forget they they're in a prone position, but
they don't want to be and they will not be. Yeah,
the government's not going horizontal on this one. Hey, before
we jump in with because you're I, I love this
(26:32):
and where we're going, I just want to point out
there just what we were kind of talking about right
before the break, just quickly, how destabilizing a country, as
we mentioned before, can be very advantageous not just to
the main or the country that's seen as your main
opponent or something, it can be advantageous to the third tier,
(26:54):
the fourth tier opponents. And it's difficult to know if
there's any meddling going on until you've got like a
post mortem. So I just want to leave that thought there. Yeah, Yeah,
you're right, you need the benefit of retrospect unless you're
in the room where those plans occur. We also can't
forget that there's a very tense border situation going on
(27:15):
right now between China and India. So there's a world where,
and this is entirely hypothetical, thankfully, there is a world
where immense destabilization in India could leave the country less
prepared to defend itself from a border grab from from
another neighboring country. So you're absolutely right. This is maybe
(27:40):
part of the motivation between behind what we're arbitrarily calling
Big Moody Energy so so on one side there that
people are saying, look, this farmers movement is somehow secretly
a separatist movement in disguise, ear least elements of it
are that. On the other side we see allegations of
(28:04):
more corruption and conspiracy as well. Critics right now are
somewhere between terrified too incredibly concerned that Prime Minister Modi
has been taking actions that they see as a path
toward authoritarianism. Big brother is um Um doing things like
(28:26):
stifling dissenting voices, blocking access to the Internet, and then
punishing journalists who stray too far from the allowable public discourse.
This is a big deal. We've discussed this before in
revolutionary moments, revolutionary movements. I'm taking myself back to Egypt
(28:52):
in the time when Twitter and the Internet really did
help to organize and fuel the the voices when there
was an uprising there in a revolution there in Egypt. Um,
and I'm imagining the response here from the Mudi government
in an attempt to stifle something like that from occurring.
(29:13):
You can see it as a play that the government
would do if it wanted to just stamp down on
this immediately right, prevent prevent the message from getting out
any further than it already has, and also on a
on a smaller level, prevent organizers from being able to
organize on the ground level. It's a real move. It's
(29:34):
a power play. If you can control the strings of
the internet. Uh, you can. You can prevent people from
from organizing very efficiently. Yeah, but it can also be
a dangerous game. Oh yeah, you know, it's it's pretty
risky because you could possibly make martyrs for a cause,
(29:57):
you could end up shooting yourself in the digital foot
and bringing more international attention. Right, well, yeah, I think
you're right there. I think I think you're absolutely right.
And and you know, the argument here has just given
the size of the protest that it was already on
the path, it was already too big to be suppressed.
(30:20):
Even even Western pop stars got involved. This is where
Rihanna shows up. She posted tweet about the protest on
February second, without recalling the specific language. It's something about
like why aren't more people talking about this? This is
a huge, reasonable question for a person to ask. But
what happened after that was pretty interesting. A lot of
(30:44):
celebrities who were more promody I guess who had described them.
They they hopped on Twitter and response and they were
urging unity while also denouncing outsider voices, saying that voices
from outsiders, meaning people who do not live in India,
are purposely trying to divide the country. To be clear,
(31:10):
I haven't I haven't spent a whole lot of time
with Rihanna, but I don't see like I don't have
an image of my head of her sort of stipiling
her fingers Monty Burns style and saying, you know, like
that's what I'll do before the next album, destabilize the
country with tweet, with one tweet, with but one tweet.
(31:35):
That's a real voice, folks, that's actually spot on impressions. Uh,
but you see what I'm saying, Like it's it's weird
to accuse people purposely doing that. Um and the Foreign
Ministry responded. The four Ministry of India responded in kind
of a passive aggressive way. Oh yes, they responded, though
they did not say hey Rihanna, or they didn't act
(31:59):
Rihanna or really just mentioned her whatsoever. This is what
they wrote. Quote. We would like to emphasize that these
protests must be seen in the context of India's democratic
ethos and polity. The temptation of sensationalist social media hashtags
and comments, especially when resorted to by celebrities and others,
(32:20):
is neither accurate nor responsible. To keep my name out
of your mouth. That's exactly it said. What they're saying
in a much more diplomatic way. Polity is, by by
the way, just it's addressed up word for the process
of a civil government or how how a government works.
The polity a form of government, a process of it
(32:44):
gotta organized society. I was telling Ben by the way
off Mike that I've never used that word in my life,
but that's that's a good one. Hey, put it in
the bank. Polity. Now you've gotten you know that I
did not. I'm trying to think when I've learned that
where it was either a song by the band Grizzly
(33:05):
Bear or it was or it was grad school. I
can't remember. You sure it wasn't a tweet from like
Andrew w K or something. I don't know. I feel
like I'm learning a lot from tweets lately. Show Yeah, right,
we all are. Uh So that that's the thing. That's
what That's what India said in response to people, you know,
(33:30):
people spreading awareness of the protest and what they felt
was maybe an inaccurate or a misleading or even an
ill intentioned way. But regardless of where you stand on
the protest, there is a pattern of escalating crackdowns by
the government of India. It is undeniably real, and it
(33:52):
goes beyond the current protest. For example, just a little
bit earlier, a stand up comedian was thrown in jail
of on suspicion, on suspicion of making a joke that
I guess did not land the way he thought it would.
I imagine your stand up set going so poorly that
(34:13):
you're arrested at the end. Yeah, well, and you can
totally see it. I can. I can see a government
that's willing to shut down the Internet during a protest,
to want to shut down a dissenting voice, even if
it's just a comedian, but like making light of a
situation or making mody you or the government look bad
(34:35):
in a punchline. Dude, I can totally see that. It
makes me wonder. The only time when comedians are arrested
or have been arrested in the United States that I'm
aware of, were for you know, naughty language, language that
wasn't allowed to be used, concepts that weren't allowed to
be said in a similar way. But it generally hasn't
ever been to my knowledge speaking against the government unless
(34:59):
something some stuff happened during the Red Skier that I
just I am not aware of. Yeah, I just you know,
the thing is, I just have this image in my
head of someone really like bombing on an open mic
night and then you know, they're they're depressed, and they're
like they get off stage and they're walking over to
(35:20):
order just the cheapest bad beer at the bar because
part of the gig is they have to buy a
beer or something, and then someone like one of the
hecklers comes up behind the dude they flash it, they
flash a badge and they're like, hey, I told you
those puns were in crime, and boom there you're under
(35:42):
comedy arrest. You're right, that can seem weird an anopolis
to a lot of us listening today, But I think
you make an excellent point when you say, you know,
it's not a step too far for government that's already
cracking down in these macro level ways detaining someone and
for some stuff they literally said for entertainment on a stage. Yeah, yeah,
(36:07):
it seems increasingly less implausible. And just for a little
more context here, this comedian was jailed, I think around
a month or so before he was given bail for
allegedly quote insulting Hindu gods and goddesses. So it really
is just showing I'm sorry. In my head it was
him making a punch line about the protests. No, no, no,
(36:31):
this is specifically just showing I guess the laws that
can be upheld for doing things like what what do
those aren't blue laws? But what do we call? Those?
Were the law where if you insult the standing religion? Um? God,
why can't I think of this word right now? Blasphemy
like a blasphemy law? Essentially, are you talking about Les
(36:54):
magesta whatever it's called. Maybe I don't speak French, but
it's um yeah E se dash m A j E
s T. Got it. It's it's the law that means
it's illegal to insult or threaten or defame a ruler
of a country, usually king or queen. H So like
(37:17):
you can't so Thailand has a law like that. You
you can't speak ill of the ruler or the air apparent.
You can't really you just shouldn't say anything you think
is off color or funny about the royal family. And
there are a lot of countries like that, you know
what I mean, where there's like where people in the
(37:37):
past have been punished for maybe walking on currency because
it had a picture of a ruler on it or something.
There dozens of different ways it could go. But I
I see what you're saying here that the idea, uh,
the ideas are troubling in that they could they can
become like that right like it may even though India
(38:00):
is in fact the world's largest democracy, people are concerned
and it's so surprised that they're concerned that this move
toward authoritarianism will continue and that maybe you know, ultimately
and this is the worst case scenario, and personally I
don't think this will happen, but the concern is that
(38:21):
it could possibly lead to a situation where India is
a democracy largely in name, the same way the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea is very much not a democracy. No, no,
it's not um and it makes total sense. Yeah, yeah,
but it's kind of like, since we're getting continue food
analogies here, man, it's kind of like, what if you
(38:43):
and I opened a fried chicken shack and it was
called vegans. That's just the name of it. It's vegans
fried chicken, and it's not vegan whatsoever is so nothing
on the menu is vegan. It's named after we have
some complex, overly elaborate origin story about why we named
it vegans. Well, it's vegans fried chicken, and we exclusively
(39:06):
sell baby back ribs. Let's do it. Yes, yeah, that's perfect.
It's the only thing on the menu. Yep. Um. We
have to have a terrible not not terrible, but we
have to have a relatively obscure soda as the only drink.
Knee I guess it's only baby back ribs and knee eyes.
(39:29):
Those are the two things on the menu at Vegans
Fried Chicken. We don't even have water. It's just I,
you know, I think we've got some place. I think
we can workshop it. I think we've got something here.
We've got some lightning in a bottle, uh, some lightning
in a bottle of knee high. But now we have
(39:49):
to ask ourselves beyond vegans fried chicken and looking towards
the global situation, looking toward the farm protests, in India.
What happens next, we'll tell you afterwards from our sponsor.
All right, we're back now. The big question is what
(40:12):
happens now. There is still a massive protest occurring in India.
There are you know, hundreds of thousands of people that
are braving cold temperatures, breathing, braving all kinds of things
to be away from their families, away from their farms,
away from their work, because they believe something, right, They
(40:34):
believe that a change needs to occur, something at least
these laws need to be changed. And we talked about
the other demands as well in the previous episode, including
a lot of UH debt forgiveness essentially or these large
crazy loans that that they're demanding are being forgiven. What
happens now? This is we did We mentioned before India
(40:56):
is the world's largest democracy, at least on paper, no
matter what you believe about the current government. How can
this stuff stand in? How does this get resolved? Yeah,
that's the uh that's the billion dollar question, the billion
bitcoin question. That's a lot of money. It's a lot
of money. It's not the first time, obviously, the large
protests have rocked that country in twenty nine. Not too
(41:20):
long ago, the Parliament of India past this bill that
gave Indian citizenship to immigrants from three different adjacent countries
as long as they were not Muslim. So this, as
you can imagine, this prompted massive demonstrations because democracies are
not supposed to practice religious discrimination in theory at least,
(41:46):
and the facts on the ground often don't match the
words on the on the papers of the constitutions what
have you. Still, despite the fact that large protests have occurred,
are occurring, will occur in the future. This protest in
particular could be dangerous for Prime Minister mode because if
(42:06):
you look at the stats we mentioned previously, farmers are
the largest voting block in the entire country, so angering
them could cost Moody a ton of votes in the
next general election, which is I go so far as
to say likely would Oh yeah, I believe so unless
there were active voters suppression efforts right, which you would
(42:29):
need to start putting in place. Now. The Modi administration,
on their part, says that there is no conspiracy of what.
Never mind the way that the bills were pushed through
for approval, Let's not talk about that. What we are doing,
in fact, is supporting farmers, supporting our fellow citizens. And
(42:50):
these new laws are solving a lot of problems that
farmers have told us about in the past. There'll be
a watershed moment. We're going to trans form India's agricultural
system in a way that would be beneficial for generations
to come there. Pretty words, but I think we've made
a pretty good case for why a lot of farmers
don't believe that to be so. And currently India's Supreme
(43:14):
Court has put these laws on hold. That means, to
a degree the protests have met with success. The Supreme
Court ordered the ordered the creation of a mediation committee.
It's going to be four people. They're supposed to take
all these conflicting views, these ideas, these desires and demands
(43:37):
and then try to come to some sort of grand compromise.
The representatives of the movements whittled down into four people.
That's those are some important folks. Well, I think that's
it won't even be all four All four slots won't
even be all protesters. Well, that's what I mean, it'll
be probably too right right to mediate. Uh so far
(44:01):
leaders of the protests are not having it, and It's
not as if they said no, we don't we don't
like the specific structure of this specific committee. They said, no,
we don't want anyone in court appointed committee. You've got
our demands. You know what we came here to do,
so run along into it. I hear that. But like
(44:24):
in any argument or negotiation, when when one party takes
a hard line like that and is not giving whatsoever
or compromising you, you know, it's very difficult to come
to a consensus. So it's I can totally see why
some people are saying the protesters and we we've only
(44:45):
seen this. I'm not saying this is what I believe.
Some people are saying that the protesters, or at least
the movement is being a I don't know, just uh,
they're being uncompromising, which could be seen as very good
but also can be seen as a negative. Because the
government offered this mediation, right, doesn't mean it's a good move,
doesn't mean it's good for the protest movement, but it
(45:07):
is something. And then they offered to continue to hold
those laws for I think eighteen months in total, or
at least push it another and push it to eighteen
months before the bills come out or are enacted. So
it's just like, um it just in defense a little
bit of the government. And I hate to even do that,
but I just want to make sure we're all being
(45:27):
fair here. Um it does up here that their attempts
being made to at least quell the anger against the government.
That's what they're attempting to do. It seems yeah, yeah,
I think that's that's a fair pointment. The other issue
on the table is that the the protesters themselves find
(45:48):
a hold unacceptable. Right. They're very explicit about their demands.
But there's another story that's going on here, which is
that deaths are continuing. These protests have proved been to
be uh fatal for several people. As of March five,
Al Jazeera reported that at least two hundred and forty
(46:08):
eight farmers had died through one means or another related
to the protest on the border of New Delhi alone,
where many protesters had converged. And and that's that's from
everything from like we said, the cold temperatures, automobile and
other like tractor accidents, and I think some has been
(46:29):
due to violence. I just haven't I haven't actually seen
a bunch about the actual violence causing deaths. It's mostly been,
at least what I've been reading about, has been mostly
people being killed as a part of just I guess
the number of people that are there, and it's too
I mean, and we're talking about literally hundreds of people.
There was an article in Foreign Policy that surprised me
(46:53):
a little bit, and I know not all of our
listeners are going to agree with it, so we'd like
to hear from you. Foreign Policy claims. There's another undercurrent
to the story that isn't being widely reported, which is
they're saying that the protest yes, are the protesters are farmers,
but they're saying the leaders of the protests are actually
(47:14):
India's better off farmers, the people who would be considered,
you know, the wealthier members of the agricultural industry, the
people with the largest farms and the largest incomes. And
we have we have a quote about this that I
thought was pretty eye opening. And here's that quote. Despite
(47:35):
what activists and Western celebrities supporting the protests would have
us believe, most of those who have been protesting the
new laws since September aren't drawn from the ranks of
marginalized subsistence farmers driven by debt and despair to the
edge of suicide. They represent instead the politically powerful and
heavily subsidized remnants of India's traditional landlord cast. These farmers
(48:00):
fear that the laws will help large agribusiness, undermine the
current state directed system for buying farm produce, and ultimately
lead to the dismantling of the price support system on
which they depend. That's interesting, man, That's a that is
honestly a perspective I had not taken into account yet. Well,
(48:23):
we know a relatively small percentage of the agricultural industry
UH benefits, at least according to some statistics from the
Mandy system. So the allegation here that the perspective here
is that the protests are being driven by people who
are just benefiting from the status quo and seeking to
(48:44):
preserve that status quo, even if those new laws might
somehow be better for the general public. So it's weird
because you can see the motivation there, you know what
I mean. And then also to your earlier excellent point
about somebody being both pro Kalistan and pro UH repeal
(49:07):
of these farmer laws. They they're not mutually exclusive. There
could be someone who is um comparatively wealthy and wants
to preserve that old system, to preserve their own wealth,
you know, and they could just also be at the protest.
It's tempting to boil it down into simplistic terms, but
(49:27):
to do so as not really fair to ourselves, to
the government of India, and to the many, many people
who continue to protest today. We know that these allegations
of conspiracy and corruption, which are flying from pretty much
every angle right that we just looked at, we know
they're going to continue, and the world is watching. There
(49:51):
are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. There's
another war that's been fought online and in the press.
Who controls the narrative right? Who is freestyling the story
that history will later write down. And I think that's
a very important question, because another way to put that
(50:12):
in very human terms is what is the future of
India's farmers? What solution, if any best, addresses this complex
web of concerns in a way that doesn't make one
party feels swindled or suppressed. I don't know, dude, After
going through all of this, I feel like my third
(50:33):
eye got squeegeed a little bit with that foreign part
policy article that I somehow missed in preparation. With this,
I can totally see how this getting rid of the
traditional mandy system that we discussed in part one, where
a farmer would have to take their produce, their crop
(50:55):
to this one place and they get either the lowest
standard price, which is pretty much what you're going to
get the lowest the minimum price because it's standard across
the board um or nothing really you're gonna get that
probably or nothing because you can't take it somewhere else.
You have to take it to this one place and
sell your crop crop at that price. It would totally
(51:18):
benefit the you know, the smaller farmer, maybe even farmers
that don't have major equipment like these huge tractors that
are that you're seeing driven around all across Deli right now.
Maybe like small family farms that have very little land
but need to be able to sell that crop for
the highest price. Maybe crazy, but maybe it would crazily
(51:41):
benefit them to be able to take that to a
big agribusiness corporation that's gonna buy you know, if they've
got good crops, are gonna buy it for a pretty
good price. That's better than that minimum, and it would
be good for the agri business because then they're getting
crops from all of these smaller farms. Dude, this is
this is blowing my mind right now, Ben, because I
(52:01):
could totally see there being enough influence within that cast,
that class of the you know, more wealthy farmers to
be able to ignite a protest like this. And that's
the thing. Yeah, you know, the reality of it is
that it is probably easier now to start a physical
protest than it has been for decades because of the
(52:25):
way you can organize through online communication. But we want
to be very clear. We're endeavoring to present all the
angles that we've seen. Uh and and that means we're
presenting angles from their perspectives of people who don't agree
with each other. But I was also surprised and intrigued
to read that foreign policy piece. Uh. Now, we don't
(52:48):
have the answer. You know, if you're if you're listening
to this the end of our second part on on
the farming protests in India, and like earlier, maybe in
part one, about twenty minute it's in, you went, oh,
I got it, Then write the email send it to us.
We please forward it. You could send it just directly
to Prime Minister Modi, but I imagine that he is
(53:11):
busy Prime ministering. But we do want to hear your opinion,
not just about this and not just about you know
what a solution could be or what the future of
India's agricultural sector will be. I want to hear about
other conflicts in the world that you think are not
getting reported, or places that you think have become hotbeds
(53:33):
of allegations of conspiracy and corruption. Tell us all about it.
We try to be very easy to find online. Yes,
please do send it to us. We will endeavor to
educate ourselves about whatever situation you present to us. To
do one more time. I think we got one in
the first episode. I don't know why. That's literally what
(53:59):
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(54:21):
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(54:42):
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(00:26):
My name is Matt Noel is on an important mission today,
they called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is part two in our
series on the massive farm protests that are ongoing in
(00:49):
India as we record, and Matt, you know, as you
and I had discussed in our earlier episode, a lot
of people in the West are not very familiar you're
with the situation, and I think a lot of people
have been confused by what seemed to be competing narratives
about what this is, how it came about, and what
(01:10):
the protesters want. Would you agree? And that's what this
part two episode is about, going through these competing narratives.
If you have not listened to part one yet, we
recommend you do that first before listening to this episode
because there's a ton of info in there that you're
gonna need to have locked away before we jumping everything today.
(01:30):
We definitely had to, so much so that we we
spent an entire episode doing that making sure that we
also understood. Uh. Here are the facts for a quick
and dirty recap, um Matt. This all hinges officially on
(01:52):
three incredibly unpopular new laws, new acts, the farm bills,
and you and I went into detail about what those do,
what they're meant to do, and why so very many
people hate them. Not everybody, but a lot of people
hate them. And ironically enough, the people who don't care
(02:14):
for these farm bills, that people who are protesting are
the very same people that these bills, in theory are
meant to help. It's about the long and short of it,
I think it is. And this is where it gets
a little murky. It's important to know that there are
many organizations and companies, private entities that really appreciate what's
(02:36):
going on with these bills. There are many people, individuals,
families that are very much not okay with it. But
we also have to take into account the organizations that
are fairly large that represent many of the individuals in
this story. Yeah, because there is not just one farmer
union farmers union in India, there are many and they
(03:00):
don't always agree. And what we found in our previous episode,
we examined a little bit about the intention of those laws,
what the critics saw as the consequences of those laws,
the negative effects that would occur, either through incompetence or
(03:21):
design on the government's part. And UH, the the one
thing you can say if first off, as we said
in last episode, thank you to all our listeners in India,
thank you to all our folks in the Indian diaspora
who wrote in to give us, to give us their
perspectives here, which are crucial. But the one thing that
(03:44):
I think we can all agree on, even if you
have wildly contradicting views of the farm protest, the Modi
government was super sketchy getting this stuff passed in a
way that does not look good. That's exactly what I
wanted to say. A major takeaway should be that these
laws got pushed through quickly with very little input or
(04:07):
no input from the people and organizations that they affect,
at least that we're aware of, and that has been
reported in the news. And maybe there were some organizations
you know, UH looked to for advice, but they weren't
the the farmers, right, yeah, exactly. And you know that's
(04:28):
a question that I was thinking about this earlier. Man.
That's that's a question that's similar to what we asked
in our episode on Davos and the Great Reset. Like, Okay,
even if you know you're let's see, your intentions are
absolutely sincere and you want to help, uh, you know,
a given population, then why is that population not in
(04:49):
the room when you're having these conversations about their future.
It's a very it's a very very good question. So
right now as we're recording this, we're pretty excited because
as we held off a lot of the juicy stuff
for for this episode specifically, I see, we just jumped
into it. If if you are also because if you're
(05:11):
also excited, match, we why why delay? Huh Yeah, let's
let's jump right into this thing. Let's uh, let's god,
I was gonna say, let's whip out the old collistoni hand.
What does that mean? We'll tell you. Here's where it
gets crazy. Corruption and conspiracy. The accusations, As we mentioned earlier,
(05:35):
the accusations are rife. They're coming from virtually every side.
It is not hyperbolic to say, millions of folks believe
there's something they don't want you to know about these
protests and these laws. The problem is that not everyone
agrees on who exactly they are. And that's where we
(05:56):
get to this quite provocative claim um from members of
India's domestic media, and from members of some regional media
outlets outside of India, and from some of our fellow
listeners who wrote in to say that these protests, however
they may have began, have been co opted in a
(06:18):
very real way. And you know, Matt, you and I said,
we pointed out that you can find news clips of
plenty of protesters, farmers talking and interviews and saying, look,
the media is misrepresenting our cause they're lying to you
about us to discredit us. Uh, the same way that
(06:43):
you would see protesters from various things here in the
US say the same thing, right, there would be people
at various domestic protests saying, um, agent provocateurs are in
the crowd, right or uh or the walls in the
case of Occupy, the Wall Street run media is purposefully
(07:06):
trying to discredit our movement and make it seem bad,
which I think to a degree was absolutely true in
that case. Yeah, well, you really just have to follow,
follow the money, really, follow the influence of you know,
a large media organization, and what are the strings that
(07:26):
can pull that organization, because there are there always are
some uh, no matter how objective a media organization wants
to be. Um well except for this one, of course.
Oh boy, they've got so many They've got so many
strings in us like today, Uh today, I'm recording in
(07:48):
our studio, in our bunker, which is why if you're
watching this on video, I'm just sort of a float.
I'm floating in the darkness with a microphone. And the
whole reason I came in, man, is because there's a
place downstairs that makes these amazing case it is and
I was it's true. It's true. Uh, that same place
(08:12):
makes even better burritos. I'm just putting that out there.
I know. But you're a burrito guy, I mean, case
a guy. There's nothing there's nothing wrong with having these
differences and segue. I'm joking, of course, by the way,
I'm I'm making light of of of the media thing.
I'm sorry to put that out No, are you kidding?
(08:35):
More burritos for you, my friend? I just can't handle
like the thing is. And it depends on where you
live a course, But in the part of the US
where Matt and I reside, there's this tendency to have
these hugely over stuffed burritos. You're getting you're getting a
tortilla log right, Can you eat a whole burrito of
(08:56):
that size? Matt generally no, but it gives me two meals, which, hey,
if I'm going to pay for one and get to
I accept. It's true that is an advantage of the burritos.
A casey is modular, though by design. I feel like
I'm getting us off track. I am sorry, You're absolutely right.
Let's see, uh segue. We're talking about differences, and when
(09:19):
we're talking about the conspiracies related to the farm protests,
what we have to remember is that we are looking
at a recent event that did not occur in a vacuum.
It is a flashpoint for some complex, at times difficult
to understand tensions and differences that already existed in some
(09:41):
cases for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Uh.
And it might seem strange to say, well, these kind
of relatively dry laws that were enacted recently or were
passed recently and then suspended. What what on earth could
they have to do with these uh, very old conflicts
(10:01):
and resentments. It's weird because you mentioned a phrase right
before everything went crazy, that a Kalistani hand. What that
is such a cool phrase, but what does it mean? Well,
we're gonna have to jump into it and explore it.
In the way we get into that is to talk
about some allegations that were made or a statement at
(10:21):
least that was made on Z News. This is an
outlet in India. There's a reporter there, suld Hear Schaudry
made the statement that the protests that are occurring right
now with the farmers protesting these bills might be cover
for something completely different. Has nothing to do actually with
(10:42):
the farming situation and the bills, that there might be
this thing a quote Kalistani hand powering the chaos that
is being seen in Delhi and in several other places
across India. So Kalistani hand. Let's just let's just answer it.
I feel weird. It's a cool phrasing. We want to
put it on a T shirt or something, even though
(11:02):
it's probably not something you want to put on a
T shirt. It just feels cool. Yeah, it might be Yeah,
we don't it might be kind of offensive. Yes. Uh.
This is another one of those things that we mentioned
in part one of this episode that is just not
going to exist for the for the most part, in
the Western world's nomenclature, in in the Western world's understanding. Um,
(11:27):
so we have to kind of jump to history to
really really fully look at this. So the Kalistani hand
refers to a movement called the Kaliston movement, and we've
discussed a little bit of this group before. The Seek
the Sikh religion, and there's a Seek separatist initiative that
(11:47):
wants to create sovereign land for for seeks, for these
seeks in the Punjab region, which is one of the
regions that is heavily affected by these farming rules or
these arming laws, because there's a ton of farmland out
there and a lot of the population in Punjab, they
make a lot of their money or most of their money,
(12:09):
if not all of their money through farming. Yeah. So
people in the Western world I think are aware of
uh Sikhs or Sikhism and have you know, the odds
are pretty likely that you have met someone who practices
this religion. It was founded in the fifteen century in Punjab,
(12:30):
in the Punjab area of India, So it makes sense
that the geographic homeland of this religion would be the
place where uh members of the Khalistan movement would want
their new sovereign state to be. The issue is that
(12:51):
obviously existing states like Pakistan and India don't want to
give up land, as we said earlier, maybe listener mail
or something that's generally something that other countries are not
down to do. So the Colista movement starts kind of
in opposition to the status quo. It's been around since
(13:15):
at least the nineteen eighties in this modern form, but
the overall idea of creating a sovereign state for practitioners
of the Seikh religion started way like dates back to
the fall of the British Empire. And of course this
is the part where we say you can't discriminate against
(13:36):
an entire religion. I mean, when you get down to it,
you know, nobody's really monolithic, right, No group of people
is super monolithic. There are always going to be individual
opinions and differences in values, and so to be very clear,
it is not as though every member of the Seek
(13:57):
religion is calling for the creation of this new state.
But there are people who believe that SEEK separatist in
the Kalistani movement have co opted the farming protest at
some point and are pushing it, escalating it further than
(14:18):
it would have gone normally. And they will argue that
the farm bill itself is only a token cause of
performative flagged wave and that the real aim of the
protest is to use them as an opportunity to gain
leverage in the fight for an independent Kalistan. Now, even
if this is the first time you have heard that concept,
(14:40):
does it not sound a little complicated? Does that sound
a look like a little Rube Goldberg esque? Yeah, it
sounds very complicated. But there are some nuances we should
discuss here. And the first is that we may be
dealing with coinciding interests here where it may be the cause,
(15:01):
you know, the farm bills, maybe the main cause to protest,
but it could also be beneficial to continue protesting into
to get leverage. It may be beneficial for that, but
I mean, I can't see that being the reason. As
we said before, it's there. The people who are protesting
are are likely very likely going to be affected by
(15:23):
these bills, even if they are a part of the
Kaliston movement. So it's tough, it's tough to really pass
through what's what there um And it could also be
this is I don't want to speak too out of
turn here because I don't know all of the details,
but it could be that the farm bills are in
(15:44):
some way another thing that would bolster the position against
the Coalistan movement from India's perspective. I see, so it
could be seen, you know, by the Colliston movement as
like making move was against them. So I I don't
know all the details, but I can just imagine those
scenarios as well. Yeah, that's a really good point. Coinciding interest,
(16:08):
we do know that times of high tension can make
for strange bedfellows, right, But again, agriculture is huge in
the Punjab region. This is the origin of the religion
known as Sikhism. So these these two ideas have been
(16:30):
together in multiple ways for a very long time. And
we also know, like we said, opportunists can influence the
direction of pre existing movements. This happens all the time.
And just for you know, I was thinking of a
good genre of example, just so people know that we're
(16:51):
not being precious about the US and that we were
very aware that talking about foreign interferences is like throwing
stones from a glasshouse, as the old cliche goes, here's
a good example of how opportunists can influence pre existing movements.
Let's say you're the US and some of your biggest
(17:17):
companies are having problems with a place that they extract
resources or labor from in South right, or Guatemala or
South or Central America Venezuela, right, right, exactly, h and
I mean Chile. Like. Look, we can contually name a
(17:37):
lot of examples. But let's say that's happening, and this
business comes to you as Uncle Sam and says, hey,
we need to keep uh resource here running. And these
crazy people in this country voted for some crazy guy
who's not going to continue selling us these things for
pennies on the dollar. It's time for chase. And they
(18:00):
know what they would actually say, Ben, what they would say,
this guy who's in power now is evil and we
have to defeat him. He's doing the wrong stuff. They
wouldn't mention any of those details. Oh yeah, not the public. No,
in public, it's like, um, well, I'm saying the wouldn't
even mention it to the young folks that they're trying
to recruit. They would, they would ideal, they would make
(18:21):
it an ideological battle. Oh yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, this
is the way you do it. So say that you
want to overthrow a government and you want to put
in usually a far right dictator who will be more
uh compliant with your geopolitical or your corporate goals, usually
which will not be super great for the people who
(18:43):
actually live in that country. So what you do is
you go, you go and find where the domestic disputes
are already simmering. Is there an area that feels like
it could be a breakaway state? Right? Is there something
that could become a flashpoint? And in different cases in
South and Central America, Uh, this could for example, start
(19:07):
at a university, start in higher education, and then suddenly
a group of college kids who have been peacefully protesting,
have been very ideologically driven to one degree or another.
Suddenly someone has put a lot of gas in their tank,
and they inexplicably have some high grade weapons top Dutch
(19:28):
training for somewhere, and they have in now a new
and very specific plan for the revolution that usually involves
opening up trade to global corporations and so on and
so on. That is, that is like an extreme but
provable level of foreign interference. We've also seen accusations you
know of for an interference in various US based protests,
(19:52):
various protests in Europe and so on. The question is
could this be happening here and if it is, could
this be the result of separatist movement interfering. Could it
be the results of maybe even another country like Pakistan interfering.
We don't know. We don't know, but we know that
(20:14):
members of India's mainstream media have put forward this conspiracy,
and they put it forward in definitive terms. But the
thing is, when you talk to the farmers, they'll unequivocally say, no,
this is not the case. We're just we're literally fighting
for our livelihoods and the health and well being of
(20:36):
our community and our descendants. Uh. And furthermore, we are
offended by the media's spin on this. Why aren't you
reporting the real issue, which is the government is trying
to break our chances at a at living a decent life.
And we have other examples that we can point to. Hear,
(21:00):
because as we said August is when these bills were
put forward. In September, I believe is when they were past.
You may have to correct me on that bend, but
I think that's the timeline we're talking about. In um
So in December, there was a post made by OP
India and there's some some staff member there that made
(21:22):
this post and they pointed to several examples on social
media accounts that seemed to demonstrate kind of a back
and forth in messaging or at least almost an on
off messaging messaging that was occurring. So let's just talk
about what it meant. Like one day they would call
for Uhkaliston, like let's establish Kaliston. The next day they
(21:46):
would support farming protests. Or the next day they would
connect the two and say, you know, support Kaliston by
supporting the farming protests. And you know, I don't want
to completely discredit that and say, yeah, okay, whatever, but
there will be some people, no doubt out there that
meet that that rubric. They are they are both supporting
(22:08):
Kaliston and they are supporting the farming protests. Sure, we
remember how many people we were talking about there could
Lord was at one point three billion or something. You
have to imagine in that large of a number of people,
you were going to have many who support both things.
I'm trying to imagine what would be like for me
(22:29):
if I was on social media, which I'm not, but
if I was on social media and I was calling
for some protests and supporting some protests but also simultaneously
supporting UH, I don't know something for Georgia to legalize it.
In Georgia legalized you know it, all of it, whatever
(22:53):
it is. But yeah, I don't know. I on social
media you can say whatever you want, and I get
I get that. OP India is pointing to that as like, look,
here's proof, and in some way it is proof supporting
what they believe, but it's not proof supporting the fact
(23:13):
that the movement has been co opted for some reason
by the Coalistan movement. Yeah, that's an important distinction. And
we also have to remember just like uh those just
like those amazing stories about Amazon Twitter bots, it's not
tough to fake uh an idea or a handle on
(23:34):
Twitter and this. So yeah, there there are questions that
would need to be answered more definitively to prove this
conspiracy was the case. But We also have to point
out again context context, context. This occurs in the context
of a extremely complex relationship between the countries of India
(23:56):
and Pakistan. Cauling a tenses is an under statement. But
with that being said, shout out to their amazing border
opening and closing ceremonies. Just because we we all are
big fans of this clip in this ceremony, let's just
play one one second of it for anyone who hasn't
hurt it. There it is. You've got to see it,
(24:21):
You've gotta you've gotta check this out. I think we've
talked about this on the show before, but Matt, can
you describe a little bit of what's going on here? Sure?
I would describe this as intense posturing, uh military members
from both sides of the border there showing just how
badass they are uh and doing it, you know, in style.
(24:46):
That's how I would put that. UM And it really
is just yeah, it's it's it's a puffing of the chests, like,
don't mess with us, because I I can, I can
step like this. Also, we have all these weapons. Yeah,
there's a lot of there's a lot of ceremony and bravado.
They're um not clip when viral a few years ago,
(25:06):
but it still holds up. It's worth it's worth the
time to see because the reason there's so much ceremony
there and so much pomp and circumstance is because the
border tensions are so high between these two countries, and
so given the enmity between Pakistan and India at times,
(25:26):
it's not surprising that there might be some people living
in India who see these protests as a false front
meant to destabilize their own country in a way that
is somehow advantageous to Pakistan. You know, we're not saying
that everybody believes that by a long stretch, but we're
saying it is a reasonable thing for someone to to
(25:47):
believe that, and so that's that's part one of the problems.
We're gonna pause, though, because there's another conspiracy you need
to hear about, and we'll tell you afterword from our
spawnswers and we're back, Big Moody energy man. The government
(26:11):
is not gonna take this line down. No, they are
not always forget they they're in a prone position, but
they don't want to be and they will not be. Yeah,
the government's not going horizontal on this one. Hey, before
we jump in with because you're I, I love this
(26:32):
and where we're going, I just want to point out
there just what we were kind of talking about right
before the break, just quickly, how destabilizing a country, as
we mentioned before, can be very advantageous not just to
the main or the country that's seen as your main
opponent or something, it can be advantageous to the third tier,
(26:54):
the fourth tier opponents. And it's difficult to know if
there's any meddling going on until you've got like a
post mortem. So I just want to leave that thought there. Yeah, Yeah,
you're right, you need the benefit of retrospect unless you're
in the room where those plans occur. We also can't
forget that there's a very tense border situation going on
(27:15):
right now between China and India. So there's a world where,
and this is entirely hypothetical, thankfully, there is a world
where immense destabilization in India could leave the country less
prepared to defend itself from a border grab from from
another neighboring country. So you're absolutely right. This is maybe
(27:40):
part of the motivation between behind what we're arbitrarily calling
Big Moody Energy so so on one side there that
people are saying, look, this farmers movement is somehow secretly
a separatist movement in disguise, ear least elements of it
are that. On the other side we see allegations of
(28:04):
more corruption and conspiracy as well. Critics right now are
somewhere between terrified too incredibly concerned that Prime Minister Modi
has been taking actions that they see as a path
toward authoritarianism. Big brother is um Um doing things like
(28:26):
stifling dissenting voices, blocking access to the Internet, and then
punishing journalists who stray too far from the allowable public discourse.
This is a big deal. We've discussed this before in
revolutionary moments, revolutionary movements. I'm taking myself back to Egypt
(28:52):
in the time when Twitter and the Internet really did
help to organize and fuel the the voices when there
was an uprising there in a revolution there in Egypt. Um,
and I'm imagining the response here from the Mudi government
in an attempt to stifle something like that from occurring.
(29:13):
You can see it as a play that the government
would do if it wanted to just stamp down on
this immediately right, prevent prevent the message from getting out
any further than it already has, and also on a
on a smaller level, prevent organizers from being able to
organize on the ground level. It's a real move. It's
(29:34):
a power play. If you can control the strings of
the internet. Uh, you can. You can prevent people from
from organizing very efficiently. Yeah, but it can also be
a dangerous game. Oh yeah, you know, it's it's pretty
risky because you could possibly make martyrs for a cause,
(29:57):
you could end up shooting yourself in the digital foot
and bringing more international attention. Right, well, yeah, I think
you're right there. I think I think you're absolutely right.
And and you know, the argument here has just given
the size of the protest that it was already on
the path, it was already too big to be suppressed.
(30:20):
Even even Western pop stars got involved. This is where
Rihanna shows up. She posted tweet about the protest on
February second, without recalling the specific language. It's something about
like why aren't more people talking about this? This is
a huge, reasonable question for a person to ask. But
what happened after that was pretty interesting. A lot of
(30:44):
celebrities who were more promody I guess who had described them.
They they hopped on Twitter and response and they were
urging unity while also denouncing outsider voices, saying that voices
from outsiders, meaning people who do not live in India,
are purposely trying to divide the country. To be clear,
(31:10):
I haven't I haven't spent a whole lot of time
with Rihanna, but I don't see like I don't have
an image of my head of her sort of stipiling
her fingers Monty Burns style and saying, you know, like
that's what I'll do before the next album, destabilize the
country with tweet, with one tweet, with but one tweet.
(31:35):
That's a real voice, folks, that's actually spot on impressions. Uh,
but you see what I'm saying, Like it's it's weird
to accuse people purposely doing that. Um and the Foreign
Ministry responded. The four Ministry of India responded in kind
of a passive aggressive way. Oh yes, they responded, though
they did not say hey Rihanna, or they didn't act
(31:59):
Rihanna or really just mentioned her whatsoever. This is what
they wrote. Quote. We would like to emphasize that these
protests must be seen in the context of India's democratic
ethos and polity. The temptation of sensationalist social media hashtags
and comments, especially when resorted to by celebrities and others,
(32:20):
is neither accurate nor responsible. To keep my name out
of your mouth. That's exactly it said. What they're saying
in a much more diplomatic way. Polity is, by by
the way, just it's addressed up word for the process
of a civil government or how how a government works.
The polity a form of government, a process of it
(32:44):
gotta organized society. I was telling Ben by the way
off Mike that I've never used that word in my life,
but that's that's a good one. Hey, put it in
the bank. Polity. Now you've gotten you know that I
did not. I'm trying to think when I've learned that
where it was either a song by the band Grizzly
(33:05):
Bear or it was or it was grad school. I
can't remember. You sure it wasn't a tweet from like
Andrew w K or something. I don't know. I feel
like I'm learning a lot from tweets lately. Show Yeah, right,
we all are. Uh So that that's the thing. That's
what That's what India said in response to people, you know,
(33:30):
people spreading awareness of the protest and what they felt
was maybe an inaccurate or a misleading or even an
ill intentioned way. But regardless of where you stand on
the protest, there is a pattern of escalating crackdowns by
the government of India. It is undeniably real, and it
(33:52):
goes beyond the current protest. For example, just a little
bit earlier, a stand up comedian was thrown in jail
of on suspicion, on suspicion of making a joke that
I guess did not land the way he thought it would.
I imagine your stand up set going so poorly that
(34:13):
you're arrested at the end. Yeah, well, and you can
totally see it. I can. I can see a government
that's willing to shut down the Internet during a protest,
to want to shut down a dissenting voice, even if
it's just a comedian, but like making light of a
situation or making mody you or the government look bad
(34:35):
in a punchline. Dude, I can totally see that. It
makes me wonder. The only time when comedians are arrested
or have been arrested in the United States that I'm
aware of, were for you know, naughty language, language that
wasn't allowed to be used, concepts that weren't allowed to
be said in a similar way. But it generally hasn't
ever been to my knowledge speaking against the government unless
(34:59):
something some stuff happened during the Red Skier that I
just I am not aware of. Yeah, I just you know,
the thing is, I just have this image in my
head of someone really like bombing on an open mic
night and then you know, they're they're depressed, and they're
like they get off stage and they're walking over to
(35:20):
order just the cheapest bad beer at the bar because
part of the gig is they have to buy a
beer or something, and then someone like one of the
hecklers comes up behind the dude they flash it, they
flash a badge and they're like, hey, I told you
those puns were in crime, and boom there you're under
(35:42):
comedy arrest. You're right, that can seem weird an anopolis
to a lot of us listening today, But I think
you make an excellent point when you say, you know,
it's not a step too far for government that's already
cracking down in these macro level ways detaining someone and
for some stuff they literally said for entertainment on a stage. Yeah, yeah,
(36:07):
it seems increasingly less implausible. And just for a little
more context here, this comedian was jailed, I think around
a month or so before he was given bail for
allegedly quote insulting Hindu gods and goddesses. So it really
is just showing I'm sorry. In my head it was
him making a punch line about the protests. No, no, no,
(36:31):
this is specifically just showing I guess the laws that
can be upheld for doing things like what what do
those aren't blue laws? But what do we call? Those?
Were the law where if you insult the standing religion? Um? God,
why can't I think of this word right now? Blasphemy
like a blasphemy law? Essentially, are you talking about Les
(36:54):
magesta whatever it's called. Maybe I don't speak French, but
it's um yeah E se dash m A j E
s T. Got it. It's it's the law that means
it's illegal to insult or threaten or defame a ruler
of a country, usually king or queen. H So like
(37:17):
you can't so Thailand has a law like that. You
you can't speak ill of the ruler or the air apparent.
You can't really you just shouldn't say anything you think
is off color or funny about the royal family. And
there are a lot of countries like that, you know
what I mean, where there's like where people in the
(37:37):
past have been punished for maybe walking on currency because
it had a picture of a ruler on it or something.
There dozens of different ways it could go. But I
I see what you're saying here that the idea, uh,
the ideas are troubling in that they could they can
become like that right like it may even though India
(38:00):
is in fact the world's largest democracy, people are concerned
and it's so surprised that they're concerned that this move
toward authoritarianism will continue and that maybe you know, ultimately
and this is the worst case scenario, and personally I
don't think this will happen, but the concern is that
(38:21):
it could possibly lead to a situation where India is
a democracy largely in name, the same way the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea is very much not a democracy. No, no,
it's not um and it makes total sense. Yeah, yeah,
but it's kind of like, since we're getting continue food
analogies here, man, it's kind of like, what if you
(38:43):
and I opened a fried chicken shack and it was
called vegans. That's just the name of it. It's vegans
fried chicken, and it's not vegan whatsoever is so nothing
on the menu is vegan. It's named after we have
some complex, overly elaborate origin story about why we named
it vegans. Well, it's vegans fried chicken, and we exclusively
(39:06):
sell baby back ribs. Let's do it. Yes, yeah, that's perfect.
It's the only thing on the menu. Yep. Um. We
have to have a terrible not not terrible, but we
have to have a relatively obscure soda as the only drink.
Knee I guess it's only baby back ribs and knee eyes.
(39:29):
Those are the two things on the menu at Vegans
Fried Chicken. We don't even have water. It's just I,
you know, I think we've got some place. I think
we can workshop it. I think we've got something here.
We've got some lightning in a bottle, uh, some lightning
in a bottle of knee high. But now we have
(39:49):
to ask ourselves beyond vegans fried chicken and looking towards
the global situation, looking toward the farm protests, in India.
What happens next, we'll tell you afterwards from our sponsor.
All right, we're back now. The big question is what
(40:12):
happens now. There is still a massive protest occurring in India.
There are you know, hundreds of thousands of people that
are braving cold temperatures, breathing, braving all kinds of things
to be away from their families, away from their farms,
away from their work, because they believe something, right, They
(40:34):
believe that a change needs to occur, something at least
these laws need to be changed. And we talked about
the other demands as well in the previous episode, including
a lot of UH debt forgiveness essentially or these large
crazy loans that that they're demanding are being forgiven. What
happens now? This is we did We mentioned before India
(40:56):
is the world's largest democracy, at least on paper, no
matter what you believe about the current government. How can
this stuff stand in? How does this get resolved? Yeah,
that's the uh that's the billion dollar question, the billion
bitcoin question. That's a lot of money. It's a lot
of money. It's not the first time, obviously, the large
protests have rocked that country in twenty nine. Not too
(41:20):
long ago, the Parliament of India past this bill that
gave Indian citizenship to immigrants from three different adjacent countries
as long as they were not Muslim. So this, as
you can imagine, this prompted massive demonstrations because democracies are
not supposed to practice religious discrimination in theory at least,
(41:46):
and the facts on the ground often don't match the
words on the on the papers of the constitutions what
have you. Still, despite the fact that large protests have occurred,
are occurring, will occur in the future. This protest in
particular could be dangerous for Prime Minister mode because if
(42:06):
you look at the stats we mentioned previously, farmers are
the largest voting block in the entire country, so angering
them could cost Moody a ton of votes in the
next general election, which is I go so far as
to say likely would Oh yeah, I believe so unless
there were active voters suppression efforts right, which you would
(42:29):
need to start putting in place. Now. The Modi administration,
on their part, says that there is no conspiracy of what.
Never mind the way that the bills were pushed through
for approval, Let's not talk about that. What we are doing,
in fact, is supporting farmers, supporting our fellow citizens. And
(42:50):
these new laws are solving a lot of problems that
farmers have told us about in the past. There'll be
a watershed moment. We're going to trans form India's agricultural
system in a way that would be beneficial for generations
to come there. Pretty words, but I think we've made
a pretty good case for why a lot of farmers
don't believe that to be so. And currently India's Supreme
(43:14):
Court has put these laws on hold. That means, to
a degree the protests have met with success. The Supreme
Court ordered the ordered the creation of a mediation committee.
It's going to be four people. They're supposed to take
all these conflicting views, these ideas, these desires and demands
(43:37):
and then try to come to some sort of grand compromise.
The representatives of the movements whittled down into four people.
That's those are some important folks. Well, I think that's
it won't even be all four All four slots won't
even be all protesters. Well, that's what I mean, it'll
be probably too right right to mediate. Uh so far
(44:01):
leaders of the protests are not having it, and It's
not as if they said no, we don't we don't
like the specific structure of this specific committee. They said, no,
we don't want anyone in court appointed committee. You've got
our demands. You know what we came here to do,
so run along into it. I hear that. But like
(44:24):
in any argument or negotiation, when when one party takes
a hard line like that and is not giving whatsoever
or compromising you, you know, it's very difficult to come
to a consensus. So it's I can totally see why
some people are saying the protesters and we we've only
(44:45):
seen this. I'm not saying this is what I believe.
Some people are saying that the protesters, or at least
the movement is being a I don't know, just uh,
they're being uncompromising, which could be seen as very good
but also can be seen as a negative. Because the
government offered this mediation, right, doesn't mean it's a good move,
doesn't mean it's good for the protest movement, but it
(45:07):
is something. And then they offered to continue to hold
those laws for I think eighteen months in total, or
at least push it another and push it to eighteen
months before the bills come out or are enacted. So
it's just like, um it just in defense a little
bit of the government. And I hate to even do that,
but I just want to make sure we're all being
(45:27):
fair here. Um it does up here that their attempts
being made to at least quell the anger against the government.
That's what they're attempting to do. It seems yeah, yeah,
I think that's that's a fair pointment. The other issue
on the table is that the the protesters themselves find
(45:48):
a hold unacceptable. Right. They're very explicit about their demands.
But there's another story that's going on here, which is
that deaths are continuing. These protests have proved been to
be uh fatal for several people. As of March five,
Al Jazeera reported that at least two hundred and forty
(46:08):
eight farmers had died through one means or another related
to the protest on the border of New Delhi alone,
where many protesters had converged. And and that's that's from
everything from like we said, the cold temperatures, automobile and
other like tractor accidents, and I think some has been
(46:29):
due to violence. I just haven't I haven't actually seen
a bunch about the actual violence causing deaths. It's mostly been,
at least what I've been reading about, has been mostly
people being killed as a part of just I guess
the number of people that are there, and it's too
I mean, and we're talking about literally hundreds of people.
There was an article in Foreign Policy that surprised me
(46:53):
a little bit, and I know not all of our
listeners are going to agree with it, so we'd like
to hear from you. Foreign Policy claims. There's another undercurrent
to the story that isn't being widely reported, which is
they're saying that the protest yes, are the protesters are farmers,
but they're saying the leaders of the protests are actually
(47:14):
India's better off farmers, the people who would be considered,
you know, the wealthier members of the agricultural industry, the
people with the largest farms and the largest incomes. And
we have we have a quote about this that I
thought was pretty eye opening. And here's that quote. Despite
(47:35):
what activists and Western celebrities supporting the protests would have
us believe, most of those who have been protesting the
new laws since September aren't drawn from the ranks of
marginalized subsistence farmers driven by debt and despair to the
edge of suicide. They represent instead the politically powerful and
heavily subsidized remnants of India's traditional landlord cast. These farmers
(48:00):
fear that the laws will help large agribusiness, undermine the
current state directed system for buying farm produce, and ultimately
lead to the dismantling of the price support system on
which they depend. That's interesting, man, That's a that is
honestly a perspective I had not taken into account yet. Well,
(48:23):
we know a relatively small percentage of the agricultural industry
UH benefits, at least according to some statistics from the
Mandy system. So the allegation here that the perspective here
is that the protests are being driven by people who
are just benefiting from the status quo and seeking to
(48:44):
preserve that status quo, even if those new laws might
somehow be better for the general public. So it's weird
because you can see the motivation there, you know what
I mean. And then also to your earlier excellent point
about somebody being both pro Kalistan and pro UH repeal
(49:07):
of these farmer laws. They they're not mutually exclusive. There
could be someone who is um comparatively wealthy and wants
to preserve that old system, to preserve their own wealth,
you know, and they could just also be at the protest.
It's tempting to boil it down into simplistic terms, but
(49:27):
to do so as not really fair to ourselves, to
the government of India, and to the many, many people
who continue to protest today. We know that these allegations
of conspiracy and corruption, which are flying from pretty much
every angle right that we just looked at, we know
they're going to continue, and the world is watching. There
(49:51):
are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. There's
another war that's been fought online and in the press.
Who controls the narrative right? Who is freestyling the story
that history will later write down. And I think that's
a very important question, because another way to put that
(50:12):
in very human terms is what is the future of
India's farmers? What solution, if any best, addresses this complex
web of concerns in a way that doesn't make one
party feels swindled or suppressed. I don't know, dude, After
going through all of this, I feel like my third
(50:33):
eye got squeegeed a little bit with that foreign part
policy article that I somehow missed in preparation. With this,
I can totally see how this getting rid of the
traditional mandy system that we discussed in part one, where
a farmer would have to take their produce, their crop
(50:55):
to this one place and they get either the lowest
standard price, which is pretty much what you're going to
get the lowest the minimum price because it's standard across
the board um or nothing really you're gonna get that
probably or nothing because you can't take it somewhere else.
You have to take it to this one place and
sell your crop crop at that price. It would totally
(51:18):
benefit the you know, the smaller farmer, maybe even farmers
that don't have major equipment like these huge tractors that
are that you're seeing driven around all across Deli right now.
Maybe like small family farms that have very little land
but need to be able to sell that crop for
the highest price. Maybe crazy, but maybe it would crazily
(51:41):
benefit them to be able to take that to a
big agribusiness corporation that's gonna buy you know, if they've
got good crops, are gonna buy it for a pretty
good price. That's better than that minimum, and it would
be good for the agri business because then they're getting
crops from all of these smaller farms. Dude, this is
this is blowing my mind right now, Ben, because I
(52:01):
could totally see there being enough influence within that cast,
that class of the you know, more wealthy farmers to
be able to ignite a protest like this. And that's
the thing. Yeah, you know, the reality of it is
that it is probably easier now to start a physical
protest than it has been for decades because of the
(52:25):
way you can organize through online communication. But we want
to be very clear. We're endeavoring to present all the
angles that we've seen. Uh and and that means we're
presenting angles from their perspectives of people who don't agree
with each other. But I was also surprised and intrigued
to read that foreign policy piece. Uh. Now, we don't
(52:48):
have the answer. You know, if you're if you're listening
to this the end of our second part on on
the farming protests in India, and like earlier, maybe in
part one, about twenty minute it's in, you went, oh,
I got it, Then write the email send it to us.
We please forward it. You could send it just directly
to Prime Minister Modi, but I imagine that he is
(53:11):
busy Prime ministering. But we do want to hear your opinion,
not just about this and not just about you know
what a solution could be or what the future of
India's agricultural sector will be. I want to hear about
other conflicts in the world that you think are not
getting reported, or places that you think have become hotbeds
(53:33):
of allegations of conspiracy and corruption. Tell us all about it.
We try to be very easy to find online. Yes,
please do send it to us. We will endeavor to
educate ourselves about whatever situation you present to us. To
do one more time. I think we got one in
the first episode. I don't know why. That's literally what
(53:59):
we're doing every episode. Here we are. We are attempting
to educate ourselves. Please yourself. Um. Yes, you can find
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(54:21):
You can go on there and have discussions about every episode.
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(54:42):
judge you. They they also are seekers of knowledge. It's
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(55:02):
t K. For some reason, whenever I say that, I
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(55:26):
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(55:50):
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(56:13):
Send us a good old fashioned email where we are.
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(56:38):
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