The Turbanators

Pagrhi Sambhal O' Jatta was the original peasant movement in the pre-colonial period that has energised farmers' protests even today

- Ronki Ram

FARMERS constitute an integral part of the agricultural economy of Punjab—not just in the past but even today. Moreover, this equation of the linkage between agriculture and economy is an all-pervasive global phenomenon. Recently, farmers were seen jamming roads in the metropolitan cities of Europe with their tractors and dumping their agricultural products in public places, in protesting poor prices and the indifference of their respective governments towards the resolution of their long-pending grievances. They face challenges from the fast-growing world of corporatism, which, of late, has also turned its gaze on the lucrative business in food. The market had been poaching agriculture land for quite some time which, in turn, forced farmers to part with their only livelihood, lured by high land prices and finally adding to the burgeoning number of unemployed people. Many among those who sat on long-drawn dharnas at farmers' protest sites earlier in the periphery of Delhi, are now camping at Khanauri and Shambhu borders on the Punjab-Haryana highway, and belong to the category of farmers who were deprived of the entire or large portion of their already small landholdings. Thus, the majority of the protesting farmers, as the general impression also alludes to, are not well off and do not have the wherewithal to remain on dharnas, away from their toiling fields for a long period without further incurring losses. They generally hold small patches of agricultural land, two to three acres, and are hard-pressed both in terms of cost of agricultural inputs and poor prices of the produce. They have been fighting a battle of survival in the farming profession.