Obedience for the leader is one of the defining roles of a good team. A pilot sits in the cockpit of a plane and sets direction for the plane. The plane does not decide its own direction. The plane obeys the pilot, and hence a smooth flight is achieved.
Given that the pilot is a right person and knows how to fly a plane, and that the plane follows his directions, they are destined to reach the destination together.
The farm unions and the farmers play the role of a pilot and a plane respectively. If farm unions and their leaders began paying heed to the tongue of every individual, there would be chaos and no strategic direction would be set. And if all individual protestors began to make their own decisions, there would be many but minuscule sparks instead of big, planned fireworks.
Singhu, it seemed, was already conversant with this model. I myself was fortunate to hear first-hand a real example of this.
On the second day of our visit, a big event followed: the Karnal cane charge. Farmers were allegedly beaten by armed policemen, and fatalities and injuries were reported. Despite this brutal attack, numbers and numbers of farmers kept sitting at the blocked toll plaza.
I eavesdropped on two farmers conversing with each other about this. An interesting detail I caught from this discussion was that the farmers were still there, the reason being that they had received no official statement asking them to leave the site, from farm leaders. They said they would get up only when some leader would tell them to do so, no matter the medium: Facebook, some messenger, some written order, or some appeal from a stage. Unless that came, they would continue the protest where they had been told to do.
This spirit of order and obedience is one of the key factors of the success of this agitation so far.
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