Tens of thousands of Indian farmers protesting agricultural reforms have driven a convoy of tractors into New Delhi as the capital celebrates Republic Day with a military parade.
India's farmers stage mass protest on national holiday
Police in New Delhi fired tear gas at protesting farmers after they broke through barricades on Tuesday.
The on-going protests upped the ante during the country's national Republic Day military parade in the capital.
The scaled-down parade, which celebrates the adoption of the Indian constitution in 1950, was overshadowed by the vast tractor rally.
DW Indian Correspondent Nimisha Jaiswal shared a video on Twitter of jubilant farmers after they broke through police lines, saying: "After tear gas and baton charges, farmers are exuberant as tractors, horses and crowds overrun the roads, and security forces leave the scene."
The protesters used cranes and ropes to pull down road blocks far from their approved marching route, forcing riot police to fall back, witnesses told Reuters.
A statement from the group of farmers unions explained that only one of the several protest parades had deviated from its pre-arranged route.
"Except for one group...our news is that all parades are happening on the pre-decided routes along with police," they said.
Why are farmers in India protesting?
Farmers have been protesting a new law which they say benefits large, private land grabbers over small local producers. Tens of thousands of angry protesters entered the outskirts of the city in a convoy of tractors earlier in the day.
"We want to show Modi our strength,'' Satpal Singh, a farmer who marched into the capital on a tractor along with his family of five, told AP.
"We will not surrender," he said.
Around half of India's 1.3 billion population works in agriculture and the on-going protests being carried out by some 150 landowning farmers represent one the biggest challenges to President Narendra Modi's government to date.
Onwards to New Delhi - A farmer's protest
"Modi will hear us now, he will have to hear us now," said Sukhdev Singh, a farmer from the agriculturally important northern state of Punjab, as he marched past the barricades.
Indian farmers in dire straits
More than half of India's farmers are in debt and more than 20,000 committed suicide in 2018 and 2019, according to official statistics.
Despite their weakening economic position — agriculture now makes up only 15% of the national economy — they represent a large voting bloc.
A series of talks have fallen flat as the farmers have consistently rejected any offer other than a complete repeal of the new law.
Devinder Sharma, an agriculture expert who campaigns for income equality for Indian farmers, said the protests were not just aimed at reforming the new law, but at "challenging the entire economic design of the country.''
"The anger that you see is compounded anger,'' Sharma said. "Inequality is growing in India and farmers are becoming poorer. Policy planners have failed to realize this and have sucked the income from the bottom to the top. The farmers are only demanding what is their right."
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