Panjab is neither a cash economy, nor a cashless one. It is an economy of unending credits and debits. I learnt this as a young boy when I ...
Panjab is neither a cash economy, nor a cashless one. It is an economy of unending credits and debits. I learnt this as a young boy when I helped with farm work in my school holidays.
I remember in a harvest season I climbed the trolley in which we carried wheat to the mandi. I sat on the piled-up wheat and our siri (permanent farmhand), Bhagta, sat with me. A few migrant labour bhaiyas also sat atop the wheat at the far end of the trolley. My uncle drove the tractor that pulled the trolley.
To me the travel from field to town seemed like a king’s procession. From my geography books I knew this wheat would reach faraway Odisha and Kerala. My uncle was the good king who served his people, fed them and saved them from hunger. It took us a whole day to unload the wheat, get it weighed, store it in sacks, sew the sacks, arrange them in order, and count them twice over. All day I helped where I could, mostly in picking up the fallen grains and putting them in sacks.
