New Delhi: Dineshbhai Parmar is angry. He receives tonnes of WhatsApp messages and videos every day. Across India, farmers like him across India are rallying against the proposed India-US trade agreement.In Gujarat’s Sabarkantha, Parmar and hundreds of others have been protesting for over two months now. “We cannot keep quiet about this. India must not be sold like this to Trump,” he said.Farmers from Punjab, Haryana and across the country have been demonstrating against the proposed India-US trade agreement by the thousands, fearing the deal could open India’s market to cheaper American products and hurt domestic agriculture. Farmers say that the agreement could adversely impact not just them but the entire agricultural chain beyond them – labourers, shopkeepers and finally, the consumers.They fear highly subsidised American agricultural products could flood the Indian market, driving down domestic crop prices and hurting rural incomes. The pain will ultimately fall on the entire domestic market, Their concern is that Indian farmers, who receive far lower government support than their US counterparts, would struggle to compete.Poles, politics and policiesIn Gujarat’s Morbi, it has been more than two months into farmer protests against the installation of high-voltage transmission lines and electricity poles by the state government on agricultural land.The project is being pushed by Halvad Transmission Ltd, a special-purpose vehicle of Adani Energy Solutions Ltd (AESL). The 756-kV transmission line will carry power from the renewable energy park in Khavda, Kutch, to Halvad in Morbi, across 246 km.Local farmers say these installations are not just robbing their agricultural land from them but also handing them poor compensation. On July 4, the government shifted the basis of compensation from Jantri rates to market value and promised upfront payment, but farmers say this resolution burdens them with the economic cost of infrastructure.Parmar, the Sabarkantha district coordinator of the All India Kisan Sabha, believes that the actual dispute is the Market Rate Committee (MRC), which the government introduced to determine the prevailing market value.Parmar explained that companies are paying farmers a one-time compensation while using the land for infrastructure that can remain in place for decades. “Modi ji is forgetting that farmers also have rights. This installation of poles for Adani’s company will render land unusable. Besides, transmission lines bring down the land price. Along with this, the FTA is also ready to rob our markets from us. We are being doubly damaged as farmers,” he told The Wire.What began as an agitation against one AESL project, a transmission line linked to the Khavda Renewable Energy Park, has snowballed into a much larger resistance to installation of transmission lines by all corporates. The renewable energy park is expected to become the world’s largest, spanning more than 72,600 hectares of land near the international border at Rann of Kutch. The project is estimated to cost Rs 1.5 lakh crore.Congress party spokesperson Saral Patel views the situation as one where farmers are being forced to fight for fair compensation, with the Gujarat Police functioning like a private militia of the Adani Group.“The BJP is proving us right every single day. We have been saying all along that this is a ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’,” Patel told The Wire. “For farmers, students, workers and ordinary citizens, getting the government to listen means protests, hunger strikes and years of struggle. But when powerful industrialists like PM Modi’s friend Adani want something, the government is ready to move,” he said.He added, “Look at Morbi. This is the Modi model of development: protect the interests of the powerful while the ordinary citizen is left to fight for their own rights. For Adani, there is a red carpet; for the farmer, there is a barricade.”Anguish across IndiaOn July 21, farmers from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and several other states tried to march to Delhi for a Kisan Mahapanchayat against the proposed India-US trade agreement. The Desh Bachao Morcha (DBM) organised the protest, which saw Haryana Police putting up heavy barricades along the Punjab-Haryana border and stopping several groups of farmers from reaching the national capital.Members of trade unions hold banners during a nationwide strike to protest an interim trade deal with the United States, February 12, 2026. Photo: AP/Manish SwarupIndia and the US are yet to sign the agreement. But farmer unions fear the ongoing negotiations could lead India to cut tariffs on US agricultural imports. They say this could leave Indian farmers competing with heavily subsidised American farm products. The Union government has said agriculture remains one of India’s “red lines” in the talks and that it will not sign a deal that compromises the country’s interests.Over the past two months, farmers across India have taken to the streets over prices, procurement, land use, trade agreements and access to agricultural resources. In Madhya Pradesh, nearly 2,000 farmers marched towards Bhopal in late July, demanding that the state procure their moong crop at the minimum support price (MSP).They also raised concerns over fertiliser shortages and delays in procurement.In Gujarat, the Morbi protests for higher compensation for the powerline installations have spread to other parts. Farmer unions have warned that lower tariffs on US agricultural imports could expose Indian farmers to competition from subsidised American produce.The state government said in July that it had abolished the earlier staggered payment system under which compensation was paid in three instalments. Now 100% of the compensation would be paid upfront, before work commences. But this too, does not work well with the farmers, who say the poles permanently diminish land value.The Samyukta Kisan Morcha and central trade unions have also called nationwide protests over the government’s agricultural and economic policies. On August 10, a mobilisation included ‘rail roko’, ‘rasta roko’ and ‘Jail Bharo’ actions in several states.These protests were led by CITU, AIKS and AIAWU in Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, and their primary demand was to repeal the new labour codes and give workers wage guarantees.In Nashik, thousands of farmers supported by the Opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) grouping blocked the Mumbai–Agra Highway in Maharashtra’s onion belt, demanding fair procurement prices, compensation for distress sales and relief from export restrictions.Then in late July, in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, thousands of farmers staged demonstrations across, under banners of various agrarian unions, combining local agricultural grievances with nationwide policy critiques. In Tamil Nadu too, farmers staged a dramatic protest demanding the immediate release of river water from Karnataka for irrigation purposes.Also in July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during the NDA Parliamentary Party meeting, assured MPs that the government’s trade deals would safeguard farmer interests, stressing that no FTA would be allowed to harm Indian farmers and that their welfare remains the top priority.These nationwide protests point to continuing concerns over farm incomes, Minimum Support Prices and procurement, land rights, trade liberalisation and the use of agricultural land for infrastructure.Resilience of farmersOn ground in Gujarat, from Dwarka district to Morbi city, Kajal Suva’s voice resonates with resilience. Suva, a journalist, says that the mainstream media is deliberately not covering the ongoing protest, which has erupted in several cities, towns and villages of the state.“Let alone basic amenities like electricity and roads, which have never been brought to rural areas, the government is now invading our ancestral land. Even while compensating farmers, they want an upper hand, they want to dictate terms. For us, it is our only source of income, for them it is just another commodity they want to purchase,” Suva told The Wire.Uploading interviews and bytes on her Gujarati news page, Gujarat No Awaz, Suva feels that the protest is only going to swell with time.Ahmedabad’s Jay Thakkar also attended these protests. Not as a farmer but as someone who wanted to understand the farmers’ troubles. “There is genuine angst among them. Several farmers complained about not receiving due compensation for letting them install these high-tension poles. Nobody paid them, and one thing was very clearly uniting them: anger against the Modi government. Imagine, they stopped the farmers’ tractor rally from reaching the Assembly building.” said Thakkar, who heads an advertising agency.Ahmedabad-based social activist Prasad Chacko recalls the 2020 farmers protests: “Back then, this inhuman dispensation allowed more than 700 farmers to die. It was the strength of resistance that forced them to repeal those laws. This happened during the student protests too. Only the growing resistance across the country eventually and rightly targeted Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, again putting this dispensation on the back foot,” Chacko told The Wire.Chacko believes that even with the agitating Gujarat farmers, this dispensation has adopted the same strategy: simply ignoring them.“It is very clear that this dispensation is nothing but an oligarchy, an unholy state-corporate nexus where peasant farming is seen as a decelerating factor of corporate appropriation of land. But the decentralised farmer resistance will grow and the Modi dispensation represented by the proxy Gujarat government will have to bow down to them before long,” he said.For farmers, these protests do not raise disconnected issues. Their concerns over the trade agreement, transmission lines and compensation all come down to the same question: how much say do they have over their own land and livelihoods when the government pursues large economic and infrastructure projects? Take a look at any of the protests, and farmers are asking the government to listen before making decisions that affect their income or their land.