Victory for Punjab farmers comes at the cost of 669 lives

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 19

The victory for farmers after a year-long struggle at the Delhi borders has come at a heavy price as 669 lives were lost.  

Hailstorm or heat wave, multiple waves of Covid or dengue outbreak, cruel roads or reckless drivers, they braved it all for 360 long days.

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"We are farmers, we see nature in much more cruel form in our fields every day so it doesn't bother us," says Murthal-based Ravinder Singh, president, Bharti Kisan Panchayat, who has been sitting at the Singhu border since November 27 last year.    

Casualties started for Punjab when preparations for the Delhi march were on in full swing last year. The first such casualty took place on November 24 last year when a large group of farmers was covering tractor-trolleys with waterproof sheets at Mehal Kalan in Barnala.

Kahan Singh, an activist of the BKU (Dakaunda) from Dhaner village, was hit by a car on the roadside where trollies were parked and died on the spot. “Kahan Singh was the first martyr of the Delhi morcha,” says Manjit Dhaner, BKU (Dakunda) leader.  

More names, those of the old and young, men and women, since kept adding to the list. The reason behind the deaths kept changing; run over by recklessly driven trucks, falling from tractor trolleys, dying from harsh cold, dengue or Covid.  

"Even nature was not kind to us. But our struggle will go down as a monument to our  sacrifice. The coming generations will know that only struggle can defeat the undefeatable, achieve the unimaginable," says Rajinder Singh Deep Singhwala of Kirti Kisan Union.

Between November 24, 2020 and November 19, 2021, 669 farmers or farm labourers died during the struggle, says Bengaluru-based writer Amandeep Sandhu, who has been keeping a track of the 'martyrs' of Delhi morcha from the beginning.

"Please tell me how do I make sense of how the 'powers that be' treat Punjab? For a whole year, the Centre did not pay heed to the protests," he wrote recently on social media.

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