Between Life, Death and Protest

The strain of sustaining a long protest is evident among farmers at Khanauri, but the sense of community remains strong

- Rakhi Bose at Khanauri border

FIFTY-three-year-old Gurmeet Singh, a landless farmer from Punjab's Mansa district, joined "farmers' protest 2.0" on February 13, 2024, when Samyukta Kisan Morcha (non-political) leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal gave the call to march to Delhi (Delhi Chalo). He worked as an electrician at the protest site on the Khanauri border, where hundreds of farmers have been camping for nearly a year. “My husband was passionate about Dallewal and loved his cause. He loved the jatthabandi (protest) more than he loved me, so he provided his services for free,” says his wife, Paramjeet Kaur.

On September 25, she received a call informing her of Singh’s death. Struggling with mounting debt and unable to pay his electricity bill, Singh had hung himself from the roof of the trailer attached to his tractor, which he had been using as a makeshift tent. Singh’s family, including his wife and three grown children, earned a living through a garments shop they ran. When the shop fell into debt during Covid-19 and Singh couldn’t find work as a farmhand, his debts piled up. “He owes several private entities a total of around Rs 5-6 lakh,” she says. Now, it is up to her to repay those loans.

Land of Sorrow

Singh is one of the hundreds of farmers who have died by suicide in India and the first of three to do so since the start of protests last year at Khanauri and Shambhu when marching farmers were violently stopped at the borders by the Haryana Police.

Despite being one of the more prosperous agrarian states, Punjab has seen a rise in farmer suicides. A recent study by Ludhiana-based Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) recorded 9,291 farmer suicides across six districts between 2000 and 2018. The report revealed that 88 per cent of these cases were linked to farm-related debts. “In Mansa district, every