For the first time since India first celebrated Republic Day on January 26, 1950, there will be two parades in Delhi next week. One will be the official parade to which the only people invited now are high officials and their friends and relations. The other is a parade that is being organised by the people of our republic to which no officials have been invited. It will be a parade of tractors carrying angry farmers and their families. It seeks not to disrupt the official parade but to make the point that the government has stopped listening to the people. If this were not true, why would the Modi government insist on farm reforms that farmers so deeply resent that they have camped on the borders of Delhi for more than two months? The unofficial parade may be stopped from entering Delhi, but the farmers have made their point.
There was a time in the early years of our republic…