Farmers Movement Archive

No ambulance for covid positive senior citizen!

fiery speeches atdera baba nanakAlmost all leaders who took to the mic during the 551st birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev held in Dera Baba Nanak on November 30 weaned away from the set trajectory and started delivering fiery speeches. Obviously, these were related to the farmers’ agitation. Cabinet minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, who was the stage secretary by virtue of being the local MLA, played peacemaker and tried to smother ruffled feathers. He was successful but only to a certain extent as the political class that day was too angry to be calmed down. Even CM Capt Amarinder Singh stressed more on the protests than on the teachings. Taking a cue, PPCC Chief Sunil Jakhar, too, delivered a passionate extempore. “Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally most important of our industries. The cities are branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deeply into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer. We should understand that farming is not a battle against nature but a partnership with it. Agriculture has become essential to life; the forest, the lake, and the ocean cannot sustain the increasing family of man. Population declines with a declining cultivation and nations have ceased to be with the extinction of agriculture,” he thundered.Compensation for dead protesting farmersThe ongoing farmers’ agitation is finding support from different quarters. Batala-based physician Dr Satnam Singh Nijjar, who has set up the Uttam Singh Nijjar foundation in the name of his father to help ‘Children of a lesser God’, as he refers to the poor and needy, and has decided to pay Rs50,000 to each of the four agriculturists’ family who have lost their lives in the protests. He has made public a phone number (99151 44226) and has made an appeal to contact him if anybody needs funds. “For long we have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist. I have grown up with the adage that only three things can kill a farmer — lightning, being rolling over by a tractor and old age. However, the protests have added another reason for farmers’ demise. We should always be ready to extend a helping hand to the hand that feeds us,” he averred.

The Tribune

2020-12-05