The successful protests against the three ‘farm laws’ forced the Indian government to repeal them in November 2021. However, the kisan andolan (farmers’ protest) has itself evolved into a wider movement demanding decisive state action to address the systemic agrarian crisis and protect rural livelihoods. The movement’s broad composition can and has served as an inspirational model for struggles in other parts of the world.In particular, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, a broad coalition representing different groups of farmers, and their allies continue to mobilise around a range of demands including the passage of a national law guaranteeing minimum support prices (MSPs) for agricultural products and a full waiver of existing debts of farmers and agricultural workers.However, negotiations with the government on these demands have shown little progress and it remains unclear whether farmers’ unions and allied organisations will come together again for large scale protests.There are also differing perspectives within the movement on how it should engage with political parties and formal electoral processes. While discussions on the protests have mostly celebrated how they overcame long-running social and economic antagonisms, there are important calls from within the farmers’ movement for greater representation and inclusion of diverse rural interests.The uncertainties and challenges underlying the future political trajectory of the kisan andolan should not, however, detract from the possibilities it has opened up.The mobilisation against the farm laws won a significant victory in a challenging domestic political context. This makes it an inspiration for democratic and social justice movements throughout the country and beyond. It has raised hopes that the emerging solidarities and alliances – between rural producers and across the rural-urban spectrum – highlighted by the protests may have planted seeds for wider counter-hegemonic social mobilisations against the authoritarian and Hindu nationalist regime.The overwhelming support extended to the kisan andolan by social movements across the world testifies to its wider relevance, and the insights this struggle can offer for progressive movements elsewhere.Farmers at Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s kisan mahapanchayat, at Nuh in Mewat, Haryana, Sunday, August 29, 2021. Photo: PTIThe success of the anti-farm law protests was, in significant part, an outcome of the prominent role played by small and medium-landholding farmers, women, and Dalit and landless workers. Harinder Kaur Bindu, a woman farm union leader, has argued that women did not just participate in the protests in large numbers, but also provided leadership to the movement.It would be a mistake to interpret the meaningful partnership of these often-neglected rural constituencies in the kisan andolan as a strategic ploy by wealthy farmers’ unions. Rather, it reflects longer-running efforts to come together around shared concerns about the impacts of agricultural liberalisation and the state’s attempts to fundamentally reshape the agricultural sector.Such alliances are especially crucial in increasingly authoritarian political contexts – in India and elsewhere – where governments are quick to single out and target individual dissenters.Widespread popular support for the movement has also presented these groups with an opportunity to open the political space for debating the causes of – and remedies for – diverse forms of rural distress. Farm labourers’ unions in Punjab, for instance, have built on the increased public attention to agrarian issues to further illuminate their ongoing struggles for land rights.Collectives like the Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM) have similarly called on farmers’ unions to engage more directly with the concerns of women cultivators. These include expanding women’s control and ownership of land and other resources, addressing the barriers they face in accessing agricultural services and markets, and specific forms of state support for women farmers.Also Read: ‘Farmers Are Free Now’: Women Celebrate Repeal of Laws – And Their Own Role in the ProtestA five-part webinar series on the theme ‘We Are All Farmers and Food Producers’, facilitated by the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), an All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee member, also focused on bringing in the perspectives of small, marginal and tenant farmers, farm workers, Adivasis, forest dwelling communities, hill cultivators, inland and coastal fishworkers, and livestock rearing and pastoralist communities.Networks like the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) have emphasised the urgency of moving towards ecologically sustainable agriculture and its close linkages to the more equitable control of agricultural resources.Such efforts to recognise the needs of different food producers – many of which are not currently included in the kisan andolan’s key demands – also feed into discussions about the wider scope and future objectives of the movement. They highlight how a continued engagement with inequalities and tensions around caste, class and gender remains crucial for sustaining the solidarities that emerged through the protests.People and movements in other parts of the world also drew inspiration from the kisan andolan. A movement bringing together what Issa Shivji dubbed ‘working people’ – various small producers selling products on the market as well as people selling their own labour for wages – is a powerful model for solidarity, but also for new ways of seeing shared challenges.‘Working people’ in Issa Shivji’s sense, have much in common: they are forced to engage in diverse forms of self-exploitation to survive, for instance, by cutting down on basic consumption, working unsustainably long hours and relying on the intensified cultivation of small landholdings.Two aspects of the ‘anti-corporatisation’ framing of the Indian farmers’ movement deserve closer attention.First, it is notable that combining the struggle against the ‘farm laws’ with demands for a comprehensive state response to the agrarian crisis helped to mobilise wide support for the protests across diverse agrarian caste/class groups and regional political-economic contexts.The explicit linkages between such demands and those being pursued by global food sovereignty movements also suggest a crucial focal point for broad-based struggle: reimagining the state’s role in facilitating just transitions away from predominant forms of input- and capital-intensive agriculture that fuel both corporate profits and the climate crisis.Second, as neoliberalism increasingly breaks down the rural/urban distinction, not just in India but globally, questions about the best ways of mobilising across the rural-urban spectrum have become increasingly pressing.The kisan andolan’s emphasis on the threat of agricultural corporatisation resonated strongly with urban workers and labour justice movements. The movement drew attention to the strong nexus between the Indian state and corporations. Large conglomerates like the Adani and Reliance groups – which have steadily increased their presence in the agricultural sector – were frequently targeted by farmers’ unions, both in their public statements and on-the-ground protests.Farmers in Hoshiarpur protesting outside a Reliance petrol pump. Photo: Kusum AroraAlso Read: Punjab Farmers’ Protest: Corporate Houses Feel the Heat, Reliance Petrol Pump Sales DeclineA focus on confronting greater corporate control of the economy may thus create crucial possibilities for mobilising rural and urban working people around similar demands.The kisan andolan highlighted that a just food system or a vision of food sovereignty can be a crucial demand for both food producers and food consumers.The ‘anti-corporatisation’ framing of the protests recognised that greater corporate control over agriculture would lead to increased exploitation and expropriation of food producers, undermine the rural support networks of urban workers, and allow the manipulation of food prices at the cost of vulnerable urban populations.It also aligned closely with the concerns of industrial labour unions, who have been at the forefront of resisting the deregulation and privatisation of the Indian economy since the early 1990s.By illuminating these connections, the movement built a narrative of shared interests: ‘our stomachs are filled by farming’.The protests against the farm laws drew on long histories of farmer mobilisations and alliance-building. And yet they were also distinctively contemporary, responding to the new realities confronting rural and urban populations in the 21st century.Building alliances around shared interests and identities is inherently a local and context-specific process, but the kisan andolan demonstrates how social movements can successfully navigate competing political imperatives: formulating demands that resonate strongly with different actors, while continuing to effectively confront state and corporate power.It is thus a crucial reminder of the power broad-based organising can wield to force change, even in repressive authoritarian settings and in the harrowing context of a global pandemic.Amod Shah is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague, TheNetherlands. His research focuses on agrarian and environmental justice conflicts in India’s coal mining regions. This article draws on his work for a recent report with the Transnational Institute, ‘Lessons from the Indian Farmers’ Movement Emerging solidarities in the Kisan Andolan’. He also supports the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) secretariat.