Farmers Movement Archive

Road blocks across India, march to Delhi in November

BATHINDA: A 4-hour countrywide road blockade on November 5 and gathering farmers in Delhi on November 26-27 will take farm unions’ agitation against three new central laws beyond Punjab. The farm unions have put the state’s Balbir Singh Rajewal on a five-member committee that will suggest how to widen the struggle. The state’s 31-organisation front sent representatives to Tuesday’s Delhi gathering called by All-India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), a conglomerate of 200 farms unions of the country. Host V M Singh, Kisan Swaraj convener Yogendra Yadav, Kavitha Kuruganti of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, and Narmada Bachao Andolan founder Medha Patkar were prominent names at the meeting. V M Singh and Yogendra Yadav said hundreds of farm unions had come together to save agricultural land from corporate and multinational takeover. Yadav said: “The way Punjab’s farmers have sustained the struggle has shown the way to the country.” Rajewal and fellow Punjab farm unionist Darshan Pal said the Centre had stopped freight trains to Punjab to cause dissensions among farmers and malign their image when they had cleared all railway lines in the state, except the internal tracks of two private thermal electricity plants. BKU (Dakaunda) general secretary Jagmohan Singh said: “The railways’ divideand-rule policy will not work in Punjab. We need fertilisers, coal, and many other essential items. By stopping the trains, the union government wants to bring us under pressure.” At the gathering’s request for a revolutionary poem, Krantikari Kisan Union president Darshan Pal got up and recited ‘Mashalan baal ke chalna jado tak raat baki hai’ (keep the flame burning until darkness is gone). BKU (Ekta Dakaunda) vice-president Manjit Singh Dhaner, who has received two remissions in a murder case under public pressure, also came up with a poem.

The Times of India

2020-10-28

Amritsar