India’s farmers are up in arms again. Will it hurt Modi’s reelection campaign?

NEW DELHI — Farmers in India's Punjab state are raising the pitch of their ongoing protests, as the second phase of India's general elections starts Friday.

Thousands of farmers continue to drum up support for their demands, foremost being a legal guarantee for minimum support prices for their produce.

They have occupied railway tracks in the northwestern state of Punjab, disrupting operations, with trains on 149 routes either being cancelled, diverted or journeys terminated midway on Wednesday, as they demand the release of farmers taken into police custody.

While the protestors are beginning to up the ante, the agitation this time, which began in February, seems a pale shadow of their movement in 2020 when hundreds of thousands of farmers took to the streets in a year-long protest against three farm laws.

In a rare policy setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the farm laws were revoked in 2021.

This time, however, fenced in by barricades and under the watchful eyes of the state police and paramilitary forces, protests have been relatively low-key and largely restricted to Shambhu and Khanauri borders between the states of Punjab and Haryana in northern India.

Some of the prominent leaders from other states who participated in the earlier protests were also missing in action.

The government has shown no signs of capitulation, even as it risks losing support from the massive farmer population at a time when Modi is fighting to win a third term in the national elections.

The Congress and several opposition parties have put farmers' demand about minimum support prices (MSP) in their manifesto, while the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has "steadfastly refused to acknowledge this demand, therefore it will have some effect