Conflicts & War

Indian farmers hold their frustration after death of young protester

By David Asta Alares

Shambhu, India, Feb 22 (EFE).- Farmers in northern India, who have been protesting for more than a week for a minimum support price (MSP) for their crops, held back their frustration on Thursday, a day after clashes with the authorities that left at least one dead and several severely injured.

“Today the situation is quieter, yesterday a protester died in Khanauri,” Guvinder Singh told EFE from the Shambhu border, which is little more than a stretch of elevated highway that bypasses a polluted river between the states of Punjab and Haryana.

Staring at members of the security forces stationed tens of meters away behind thick concrete barricades, a protester had just learned of the tragedy and responded with astonishment. With mobile networks blocked, there is almost a news blackout.

Shubh Karan Singh, 23, died Wednesday during clashes with the security forces which threw tear gas on the protesters in Khanauri, a hundred kilometers south of Shambhu.

Khanauri and Shambhu are two major points of action in the farmers’ protest as thousands of farmers from Punjab attempt to cross over in their march to New Delhi since last week.

Sitting in front of the Rajindra hospital morgue in the city of Patiala in Punjab, and situated halfway from the two border points, two young Singh residents – who asked not to be named – told EFE they would wait for the relatives of the deceased to move the body to Bathinda district.

Jagbir, among those seriously injured in Khanauri clashes and who were transferred to the same hospital, spoke about the violent crackdown on them by the security forces.

“We just wanted to go to Delhi peacefully,” Jagbir, whose left eye was severely swollen from the impact of a pellet, told EFE. He also showed wounds on his torso left by pellets, allegedly used by the security forces against the protesters.

The Haryana Police, after denying on social network X the death of any farmer in the protests, said that a dozen officers were seriously wounded by the protesters.

In one of the adjacent emergency room beds, Baljeet, 24, with his torso covered with gauze, told EFE that he was delivering food and away from the front line of the clashes when he was hit by several pellets.

“They crossed the Haryana border and started firing,” he said.

“Delhi is our capital, it is our right to go to Delhi, why are they stopping us? They have made the Punjab-Haryana border like the India-Pakistan border,” said protester Darshan Singh at Shambhu.

The farmers’ leaders announced Wednesday they would stop their attempts to break the police barricades at least until Saturday, as they assess the situation and meet with representatives of the Indian government to make their demands heard.

One of the main demands of the demonstrators marching to the Indian capital is the legal implementation of MSP for 23 crops across the country.

“The farmers should get MSP, they (farmers) are committing suicides, the number of farmers continuing agriculture is reducing day by day, and inflation has doubled, which is why MSP is required,” Kuldeep Singh, another demonstrator, told EFE.

It is a kind of a “cushion,” Seema Bathla, a professor specializing in agricultural economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told EFE.

However, she underlined that MSP was only a security mechanism that allows farmers not to incur insurmountable losses, but would “not solve their problem.”

The Indian countryside – which according to the 2011 census employed 481 of the country’s 1.21 billion population despite contributing only 18 percent of its GDP – needs to diversify its crops and the government should push for a necessary industrialization to absorb those who abandon agriculture, she said.

Last week, thousands of farmers on hundreds of tractors began a massive march towards New Delhi from the neighboring states of Haryana and Punjab, the latter being known as the ‘breadbasket of India,’ to press home their demands.

Related Articles

Back to top button