Farmers evolve rotation strategy to balance protests and farming

Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait. File pic/AFP

The season for harvesting crops is arriving next month and the agitating farmers from Punjab and Haryana have devised a "rotational" strategy to deal with the shortage of manpower in their respective villages since most of the men are involved in agitation at different protest sites.

The farmers said that they harvest their crops over the entire month of April. However, since this year they are involved in the agitation, farmers will attend the protest on rotation for ten days each so that they can give ample time to their farm produce which would be ready for harvest.

"We would rotate three times a month. A batch will replace the previous one so that they can go back to the work. Ten days after, the next batch will replace the one present at the protest site. This is how we will spend our April," informed 60-year-old Jagdish Dhillon, a farm leader from the Bharatiya Kisan Union.

"We have to look after our family as well as devote time for the cause (protest). This is our strategy to balance both," he added.

However, the farmers would require the tractors and trolleys for crop harvesting, and taking them back for a month means loss of shelter to many landless farmers to whom the trolleys served as a temporary home at protest sites such as Singhu and Ghazipur.

Reacting to this, Ajaib Singh, 47, a farmer from Haryana, said that those farmers who arrived here with spare tractors and trolleys would leave them behind while moving back to their villages so that those camping here can make use of them.

"There are people among us who have a pair of tractors and trolleys. Those farmers will leave the extra one here. It will be used by our brothers as a shelter as well as for scaling up the agitation when required," he added.

Amplifying the agitation against three farm laws which completed its 100th day on Saturday, the farmers have blocked the 135-km-long Western Peripheral Expressway, also known as Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway, from 11 a.m. to till 4 p.m. on Saturday to mark 100 days.

The farmer agitation against Centre's farm laws, had begun on November 26.

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