All through the day, makeshift kitchens that have sprung up on the roadside dish out hot meals to farmers who are demanding the roll back of new laws that liberalize rules for sale of farm produce to private companies.
The plight of farmers in India has mutated itself into a national movement that has gripped the whole country.
Shakeel Mohammed Qureshi, whose father is a farmer in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat district, has distributed around 300 jackets and sweaters for free among the peasants.
The langars are not just feeding the farmers camped at the border-- they have also come as a boon to several underprivileged people in the vicinity of the blockade.
The farmers and that the protests were the culmination of “40 years of anger and disenchantment at a broken system that has bankrupted farmers, destroyed food security and led to an ecological crisis in India.”
India has called the remarks by foreign leaders and politicians on protests by farmers as ‘ill-informed’ and ‘unwarranted’ as the matter pertained to the internal affairs of a democratic country
Rallies or solidarity actions have taken place in many cities including Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane. There were protests outside the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) with slogans and banners during the 2nd T20 cricket match between Australia and India.
While their numbers might be smaller when compared to the Sikh men protesting, Sikh women are seen at the forefront in many cases. “Women are involved in unprecedented numbers in this campaign,” writes Ravinder Randhawa. “They form a significant proportion of the convoys heading towards Delhi.” One farmer Randhawa interviewed, Harinder Bindu, is herself a full time farmer for over 30 years, who is leading a monumental march of [hundreds if not thousands] of women.
Wishing our farmers best of luck, financial security, and economic success. Let this new model become the second Green Revolution bringing prosperity to the farmers.
The protesting farmers had on Wednesday threatened to block other roads of Delhi in the coming days if the new agriculture laws are not scrapped soon.