At 11am last Tuesday, Inderjit Singh Khullar loaded his truck with firewood and headed out of his village in central Punjab’s grain bowl of Moga for the Delhi-Haryana border at Singhu. He had with him three other men who made the same 330km trip seven times before in the past 30 days, each time with different loads: Food, water, milk, or blankets.
They drove through the day, stopping only for short durations in makeshift community kitchens, or langars, set up on the highway linking Punjab to Delhi. All farmers, the four men took turns to drive and fought sleep by talking about the protests against three recently enacted farm laws. “In our village, everyone only talks about the protests. They say it is our final stand, it is do or die,” said the 30-year-old.
At 2am, their truck pulled up at the protest site on National Highway 44 that links Srinagar to Kanyakumari. They had driven through Haryana, where last months, groups of farmers clashed violently with security forces, braving water cannons, tear gas and lathicharge en route to Delhi, throwing police barricades into the river and driving their tractor-trolleys over ditches dug on highways.
But the truckers found little resistance on their way. “In the initial days of the protest, we used to be stopped at checkpoints. Now, they have softened their stance and allow us to pass by. They have also understood,” Khullar said.
His friend, Gurpreet Singh from Ferozepur district, said almost half his village was at Singhu, and the rest were at home but eagerly following the protest. They get minute-by-minute updates through the many Punjabi accounts on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp broadcast that have mushroomed over the past month. “Sometimes they are even better informed than us,” Singh joked.
Back home, the families have formed a system to take turns on work on fields that need sowing, tilling of weeding. If someone’s family members are at Singhu, others are pitching in. “Our political differences have dissolved. This is our united fight,” said Singh.
The four men slept in the truck, woke up early on Wednesday and maneuvered through a narrow strip of the highway kept open by farmers for supply vehicles and visitors. As they chatted and unloaded the supplies, people gathered around them for the wood, essential for cooking and bonfires during the chilly December nights.
The men stayed on for a few days, checking with people what supplies the protesters are running low on, before leaving again. “We want to stay here but someone also has to work back home on the fields of these farmers and ensure they have all that they need here,” Khullar said, wiping sweat off his brow.
The four men are part of an intricate but informal network of workers who have sustained the month-long protest by farmers at Singhu by replenishing dwindling rations, cooking for thousands, sweeping roads, distributing woolen socks free-of-cost, cleaning toilets, organising security patrols, buying tens of thousands bottled water, and even keeping up morale with displays of community pride or chanting religious hymns.
Together, these groups have helped farmers from Punjab, Haryana and elsewhere in northern India put up a largely united stand in their deadlocked talks with the government to press for the repeal of the three agriculture reform laws. “This is our seva for this cause,” said Khullar.
LIVING ON A HIGHWAY
Protests began in Punjab and Haryana shortly after the government pushed the three laws – Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill 2020 – through Parliament in September.
The laws did away with a network of decades-old, government-controlled agricultural markets, allowed businesses to freely trade farm produce outside the so-called mandi system, permitted private traders to enter the market and laid down new rules for contract farming.
But many farm groups rejected the new legislation, saying the reforms left them vulnerable to exploitation by big corporations and eroded the government’s procurement and price support system. The possibility that state-run market yards known as agricultural produce marketing committees (APMCs) – of which there are about 585 in 16 states and two union territories -- could shut down also fuelled anger.