Fifty-eight-year-old Jasbeer Singh listed the names of the places in Haryana where he had to negotiate police barriers before finally arriv...
Fifty-eight-year-old Jasbeer Singh listed the names of the places in Haryana where he had to negotiate police barriers before finally arriving at the state’s Singhu border with Delhi as he travelled from his home in Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district about 250 km away.
Shambhu, between Punjab and Haryana, had been fortified with cement road dividers. In Karnal, the authorities had parked approximately 150 driverless trucks in the middle of the highway. At Panipat and Sonipat, eight-foot-deep trenches had been dug across the highway.
Singh was among the tens of thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh who were driving their tractors to the Capital to demand that three new agricultural laws be rolled back. They fear that the legislations will end the minimum support prices they receive from the government on key crops, leaving them at the mercy of corporations.
But Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh had tried to prevent the farmers from crossing state boundaries. When the farmers burst through the barricades, they were met with police batons, tear gas and water cannons.
“We first broke [Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal] Khattar’s ego and then we broke Modi’s ego,” said Jasbeer Singh. He finally reached Delhi’s borders on November 27....
