Labour-land owner barriers blur at Singhu protest site

Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Singhu border, December 12

It’s 2.30 pm. Bakhshish Singh (55), a farm labourer from Thakar Sandhu village in Gurdaspur, is busy in the community kitchen, preparing chapatis for fellow villagers who have returned after a hectic day of sloganeering and listening to speeches of farm leaders at the protest venue, a few km away.

After a short while, he is seen getting a nap, sharing a mattress with Rajinder Singh, a fellow villager in whose field Bakhshish Singh has been working for years. A large number of farm labourers, both men and women, have been doing their bit to keep the “Kisan Andolan” kicking.

In fact, a new social order has come into existence here. Driven by camaraderie and threat to their existence, farm labourers have joined farmers in their “fight-to-finish”.

“We are integral part of farmers’ arduous lifestyle in the fields. We are also part of their good and bad times. If the livelihood of farmers is at stake, it’s our moral duty to be here with them,” says 50-year-old Kashmir Kaur, a farm labourer.

She is here as part of a Majha Kisan Sangharh Committee jatha from Gurdaspur. Her concerns are echoed by Rajinder Singh, who owns 40 acres in the village.

A few metres away, the same phenomenon is witnessed as Satnam Singh, a farmer from Kurdan village in Phillaur, joins hands with Surjit, a farm labourer from the same village, to broom the area littered with empty water bottles and paper plates.