For 32-year-old Goldie, a tailor from Sri Muktsar Sahib district in Punjab, the slogan ‘Kisan Mazdoor Ekta’ – farmer-worker unity – rings t...
For 32-year-old Goldie, a tailor from Sri Muktsar Sahib district in Punjab, the slogan ‘Kisan Mazdoor Ekta’ – farmer-worker unity – rings true. “No one asks me if I am a Dalit,” he said. “Everyone eats together. It is a milestone for us.”
Goldie has been camping in Tikri village on the Delhi-Haryana border since November. It is one of the three sites on the doorstep of India’s capital where thousands of farmers have been protesting against the Modi government’s three farm laws, which they fear they will open the doors to corporate dominance of the agricultural sector and undermine their livelihoods.
Although Goldie is not a farmer, he decided to join the protests since he believes the laws will adversely impact the entire working-class, not just farmers. The protest movement, in fact, seems to have built wider solidarities between a section of workers and farmers, who are otherwise often locked in economic conflict over agricultural wages.
The solidarities have drawn more attention after a young labour activist, Nodeep Kaur, was arrested for mobilising workers near the Singhu farm protest site. In early January, Kaur and her colleagues from the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan staged a demonstration in the Kundli industrial area, near Singhu, outside a factory that had...
