Farmers observe Bharat Bandh at Delhi’s Tikri border
New Delhi: Rousing slogans and speeches reverberated through the air at Tikri Border during the Bhart Bandh on Tuesday as thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan demanded revocation of the new farm laws.
“Amendments are just a ploy to cut short our protest and send us back home,” said Sikander Khan, who has been camping at the Delhi-Haryana border since the last three days.
A small farmer from Hanumangarh in Rajasthan, Khan makes his living by growing wheat, jowar and mustard on his four acres of land, which he is afraid is threatened by the new farm laws.
Explaining the problems with the new legislations, he said that the private entities might initially offer a higher price for their produce, forcing the ‘arhtiyas’ or local middlemen in the mandis to shut shop, following which the corporates will pay the farmers peanuts for the crops.
“And once the ‘arhtiyas’ disappear, we will have nowhere to go. We will have to sell to the corporations at negligible prices,” Khan said.
Raghuvir Singh from Sirsa in Haryana said he didn’t understand why the government wouldn’t give its assurance on retaining the minimum support price (MSP) in writing.
“There is nothing to amend in these laws.The government keeps saying that MSP will continue to be there, then why aren’t they giving that in writing?
“Government doesn’t care if the farmers live or die. We have anyway been selling wheat at Rs 1500/quintal instead of Rs 1925/quintal. With these laws, the farmers will be finished, Singh, who arrived at the Tikri border 10 days back, said.
The Bharat Bandh was observed at the border on Tuesday from 11 am to 3pm with farmer leaders delivering rousing speeches.
Chants of ‘Jai kisan’, ‘Humara bhai chara zindabad, Kisan ekta zindabad,’ ‘tanashahi nahi chalegi’, could be heard loud and clear as over 2000 farmers shouted in unison, amid heavy security deployment by the Delhi police.
A multi-layered barricading was put in place around the protest site to prevent any possibility of the bandh turning chaotic.
“Although we don’t expect the protest to turn violent, we are prepared. We have deployed enough force,” a Delhi police official said.
Responding to whether the farmers plan to call any more bandhs, Gulab Singh from Punjab’s Abohar said, “The bandh was a symbolic gesture on our part. We didn’t want to disrupt the lives of the public. We have allowed ambulances to go through without any issues, but we will continue to protest as long as it takes for the government to fulfil our demands.”
Not associated with any farmers’ union, he said that he had come prepared for a long haul with enough ration to last him three to four months. He has been sleeping in his tractor since the last six days.
One of the grievances of the farmers from Punjab, Gulab Singh said, was that not all crops fell under the ambit of MSP, even without the new farm laws in place. Among such crops is Kinnow (Mandarin hybrid), which is bought from the farmers at a rate of Rs 1100/quintal (Rs 11/kg), but is sold to the public at Rs 35-40/kg.
“Farmers like us who grow Kinnow and cotton (comes under MSP but sells in limited quantities) are already running in losses,” Gulab Singh said.
According to Gurmeet Singh from Rajasthan’s Ganganagar, the new farm laws also threaten the farmers’ ownership of their lands. “With MSP gone, there will be a huge decrease in farmers earnings, and it might lead the farmer to sell off his land to these corporations. Farmers will have to work as labourers on lands they have owned for generations,” the member of the Ganganagar Kisan Samiti (GKS) said.
On being repetitively called “Khalistani” and “Pakistani”, farmers said that these names were being used to divert attention from their cause. “This kind of unity among farmers from different parts of the country is being seen for the first time ever,” Gurmeet Singh said.
Echoing his sentiment, Sikander Khan said, “In our andolan’ no-one is Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. We are all farmers.”
Tikri is one of the border points of Delhi where thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, have been protesting against the three contentious farm laws of the past 13 days. (PTI)
