Has Narendra Modi met his match? For nearly a month, farmers have dug in for a fight over a reform bill that upends the subsidy system at the core of a sector that still employs more than half the country's workforce. Protesters are unmoved by attempts to brand them as dangerous agitators or terrorists.
We ask about a deregulation that critics say was too important to rush through parliament. In what's to become the world's most populous nation, what future for small subsistence farming threatened by water guzzling, pesticide-hungry cash crops? Many on those farms are day labourers. What future for them?
Back in the capital, all eyes turn to a prime minister who in six and-a-half years has always stared down challenges and protest, be it over demonetisation, Kashmir, or citizenship for non-Muslims. This time, will he be forced to bend... or even, to back down?
Produced by Charles Wente, Juliette Laurain and Imen Mellaz.
