Hope And Despair At The Shambhu Border

It’s a dimly lit room. The walls are colourless, lined with studio portraits of family members. One can hear the cold winds in the stillness of the household. Manjeet Kaur, 71, rocks back and forth, recounting her son’s last physical memory in a loop. She cries and smiles at the same time. “When I return for Lohriꦫ, we will all celebrate together,” Resham Singh, 53, had promised her, before leaving for Shambhu border, where farmers have been protesting for the past one year. The celebration never took place. Instead, the news of her son’s death reached her a week later.

Singh left home from his village in Pahu Wind—in Tarn Taran district of Punjab—on January 3. He broke his promise to his mother and family on January 9, when he consumed ‘Sulphas’—a cheap pesticide commonly used by farmers—at the border and took his life. He was unable to bear the distress he saw his fellow farmers going through. “Jhappi paa ke gaya tha mujhe, bola ki main aa reya hun,” Kaur recalls, as she wails inconsolably.

“Hansta khelta gaya tha woh, koi problem, koi tension nahin,” remembers Sucha Singh, a member of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, who was with Resham Singh on the day of his suicide. While narrating the incident sitting in the compound of Resham Singh’s house—not very far from the India-Pakistan border—Singh says: “Around 9.15 am, when I went for langarᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ duty, he committed the act. After consuming the poisonous substance, he called to inform me. When I asked him why he did it, he said: ‘I’m fed up with this government’.”

Sucha Singh takes out from his pocket the suicide note that Resham Singh wrote. He still carries it with him. In a trembling voice, he reads out the deceased farmer’s last words: “It’s been so long since we have been sitting on the roads—our children, our mothers, our elders have all been stationed here. Dallewal ji (farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal) has been sitting on a fast-unto-death. And yet, this government has not heard us. I believe that to wake the Modi government and the Punjab government up, there is a need to sacrifice lives. This is why I want to be the first one to sacrifice my life for this cause. I couldn’t bear to witness Dallewal ji’s shahadat🧜. I’m pained looking at our mothers and sisters sitting here.”

✨He was rushed to the Civil Hospital in Rajpura, where his preliminary treatment was done. He was then moved to a hospital in Patiala, but within minutes of reaching there, they lost him.

🐻Resham Singh is the third farmer who took his life at the farmers’ protests, which will complete a year this February. On December 14, 2024, Ranjodh Singh—a 57-year-old farmer from Ratanheri village in Ludhiana district—also died by suicide at Shambhu border, distressed with Dallewal’s fast-unto-death. Before him, Gurmeet Singh from Mansa district ended his life at the Khanauri border protest site on September 26, 2024. Apart from these deaths, 32 other farmers have lost their lives during the year-long protest at both the borders.

Singh’s family is still numb with grief. His wife Davinder Kaur, 45, is sitting listlessly in her front yard on a cot. Her eyes are empty. In 2012, she lost her older son to an accident. And now, her husband has left her. She only has her younger son, Inderjeet Singh, 31, left as her support. “The government has turned a deaf ear to us. If they listened to us, why would we need to die?” she asks. Kaur spoke to her husband on call every day. He regularly shared the difficulties that the farmers have been encountering in the day-to-day protest at the borders. “He told me how they did not have enough rotis💞 to eat and water to drink. Sleeping on the roads, without a roof over their heads isn’t easy in such extreme weather,” she says. While Singh communicated his pain for his fellow farmers, he never spoke about any personal distress.

The future looks bleak for Kaur and Inderjeet Singh. “My son is a granthi📖. He earns a measly salary of Rs 12,000. He has a wife and a five-year-old child. In such little money, will he sustain me or his own family?” Resham Singh had no land of his own. He had taken about half an acre of land on lease to cultivate wheat. After his death, government officials from the District Collector’s office visited Singh’s family and assured a compensation of Rs 5 lakh. But the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee has been firm in their demand for a Rs 25-lakh compensation, a government job for Singh’s next of kin and a loan waiver.

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Shambhu border𓆏 is around 250 kilometres from Resham Singh’s village in Pahu Wind. The highway NH-44—with fields and scant houses on either side—is lined with tractor trailers, covered with tarpaulin sheets and turned into shelters for the protestors.

(This appeared in the print as 'Embers Rekindled')

💛On the chilly afternoon of Lohri, around 300 farmers are seated before a stage, where their leaders are giving speeches. They hold union flags of various hues that flutter in the winter breeze. “These are like classes for us. We come here daily and sit from morning to afternoon, listening to our leaders,” says one of the farmers in the crowd.

Dharam Singh Sidhu, a member of Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee and senior pradhan of Firozpur district, has been a part of the Shambhu border protests from February 13, 2024. He states that nearly 100 jatthebandis (unions) are a part of the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha at Shambhu border and include farmers from both Punjab and Haryana. When asked about their charter of demands, he says that a law which guarantees the Minimum Support Price (MSP) is a must. “It is important that the prices of our crops are fixed according to the Swaminathan Committee’s recommendations🅘,” says Sidhu. Loan waivers for farmers in debt, a minimum daily wage of 700 rupees for the labourers under MGNREGA and 200 days of assured employment, too, feature significantly in the charter. “We are also demanding the withdrawal of the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 and keeping the Land Acquisition Act of 2003 intact,” he adds. From a legal perspective, the quashing of all criminal cases against the farmers from the 2020-21 protests and punishment for the accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri killings of 2021 are important demands.

𒀰The popular portrayal of the protesting farmers being “rich” with large land holdings is far from the reality here. Sarwan Singh Pandher—coordinator of the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha and leader of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee—says that big farmers, who have landholdings of 20 acres or more, are hardly part of these protests. “Our protest comprises mostly of marginal and middle farmers, most of whom own land under 2.5 acres. There are some who have five or 10 acres, but those who have more land are very few.” The protests include farmers like Resham Singh, who do not have their own landholdings but farm on leased land, as well as landless agricultural labourers. This is why the demand of loan waivers features prominently in their charter.

ไThe participation by farmers at these protests is rotational and planned district-wise. Each district is assigned to stay at the border for at least fifteen days. During this time, responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning and attending to the needs of the elderly are taken up by every member. While Pandher’s Kisan Mazdoor Morcha organises the setup at Shambhu, Dallewal’s Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political) is responsible for the protest at Khanauri.

🍒Sukhwinder Singh Sabhra, the State President of Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, participates in implementing the plans at Shambhu. “Between February 13 and 21 in 2024, brutal attacks by the Haryana government were launched on all of us. There was heavy tear gas shelling and the roads were obstructed with nails and barricades,” he recalls from the beginning of the protests. “Nearly 467 farmers from our side have been injured until now. Around 8 to 10 among them lost their eyesight. One young farmer, Shubhkaran Singh, was killed on the spot at Khanauri. The government is waging a war against us; we, on the other hand, are simply asking that if you accepted our demands earlier, why haven’t you kept your promise?” he questions.

Sabhra’s insights unveil the deeper rot in government policies, due to which farmers are being forced to take to the streets repeatedly. “The World Trade Organisation’s policies have been detrimental to India. Political parties of all shades—be it Congress, AAP, BJP 🅰or other regional parties—have been signatories to this agreement,” he says. “These policies may be useful for countries, where industrial farming is done on 1,000 acres of land or more. In our country, a huge section of farmers till land which is just half an acre. Under such circumstances, the government must reconsider their position on this issue,” he adds. Sabhra’s observations were echoed in the Swaminathan Committee’s reports as well, which reflected the highest percentage of households under sub-margin landholdings of less than one acre.

“In 2011, when Narendra Modi🗹 was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he himself had told the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the Swaminathan Committee report must be implemented. And when he came to the post, he refused to work on its implementation. Instead, his government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court that these recommendations cannot be brought to fruition,” he states.

When asked what issues the Unions placed before the Committee constituted by the Supreme Court♏, Sabhra says, “The Committee constituted by the Supreme Court has not been made to answer our demands; it has been made to clear these road blockades. But the roads have not been blocked by us; they have been blocked by the government itself. They have set up the barricades and stationed the police force. When the High court directed the Haryana government to remove the barricades, they took the matter to the Supreme Court. When we have not blocked the roads, what is the point of talking to this Committee?”

ꦓSabhra knew Resham Singh personally—they both come from Punjab’s Tarn Taran district. The two of them had joined the protests together, both in 2020-21 as well as in 2024. Singh’s suicide severely hit the morale of the protestors at Shambhu border. “I believe suicide is not the solution to any problem. But look at the statistics: nearly 30 farmers die by suicide in this country every day. The real issue is that we do not get the correct price for our yield. Once the produce enters the market through the corporates, its price goes up nearly four times. The fight for MSP is not just for us, the producers; it is also for every citizen, who consumes this yield,” he explains.

🍌When asked why it took longer for the Unions in Punjab and Haryana to come together this time, as compared to the 2020-21 protests, he says that there was a “difference in perspectives on how to approach these issues”. But with the new agricultural policy draft, everyone has realised the urgency of these protests. Sabhra, Sidhu and several other farmers at the protest claim that the new policy provides a backdoor entry for the same farm laws that were taken back by the government in 2021.

As the sunlight retreats, preparations for the Lohri bonfire begin at the protest site. Printed copies of the new agricultural policy draft are handed out to all the farmers around the bonfire. “Sadda Haq! Etthe Rakh!”🤡 the farmers cry, while the draft is burnt in the fire. Amongst them, there are also landless labourers who are part of the protest. Darshan Singh is one of them. While many claim that the farmer protests solely highlight the concerns of big farmers, Singh says that the new agricultural policy will not benefit the landless labourers either. “We are poor people. We can’t buy our own land. If the farmers aren’t left with any land, where will we work? What is the Modi government doing? It is looting all of us.” Singh has been part of the protests for 11 months now. “We have been forced to leave our work and sit on the roads. This government is turning back on its own promises and feeding our children has become an impossible task for us, too,” he says.

Some of the protestors state that a media invite was sent out to cover the event. However, the absence of any media outlet in the space is glaring. “A lot of the news about the momentum of these protests across the country doesn’t make its way into mainstream media narratives,” Pandher states. “The farmers have been consistently protesting across many states for quite some time now. In Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, farmers have been part of rail roko protests. The same is the case in Tamil Nadu, where 34-35 unions are involved, and Rajasthan, where around 6 unions are participating. Apart from them, we are in touch with 17 unions in Kerala and five in Bihar. Dallewal saab😼’s SKM is in touch with unions from Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Haryana,” he adds.

When asked if he believes that the government will pay heed to the deteriorating health of senior leader Dallewal, Pandher doesn’t seem hopeful. “Dallewal saab’s health is critical but the government has still not opened any channels for us. Instead, the Supreme Court committee has been sent to end the blockade.” However, the fast-unto-death announced by a jattha𝔍 of 111 farmers at the Khanauri border on January 15, in solidarity with Dallewal, has breathed new life into the protests. In response, 101 farmers from Shambhu border have now announced that they will march towards Delhi again on January 21, in a bid to escalate the pressure on the government to concede to their demands. While a larger unity is seemingly forging through the course of meetings amongst the farmer unions, it remains to be seen whether the Modi government will bow down to their grit once more.

Apeksha Priyadarshini at Shambhu border