New Delhi: A convoy of at least 10,000 female protesters heading towards Delhi from 14 Punjab districts is led by a female farmer.
Harinder Bindu from Bhatinda has been a farmer for no less than 30 years.
Bindu has lived his entire life in Punjab with his son, brother, sister-in-law, and parents. Bindu, a high school graduate who attended a local school in Bhatinda, had been interested in agriculture from an early age.
All was well until the Center introduced three highly controversial agricultural laws, against which farmers across the country and especially in Bindu’s home state of Punjab have been protesting for the past few months.
On November 26, thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, who had started a ‘Delhi chalo’ movement to voice their concerns in the national capital, encountered water cannons, tear gas shells, barbed wire and barricades.
This “attack” on farmers, she says, feels personal to her.
Farmers fear that private companies will take over the market and exploit it. The law, they have argued, will eliminate the protection of the minimum support price (MSP). They are demanding that these laws be removed or that a new law be enacted guaranteeing MSP on their products.
A protester at Nirankari Grounds. Photo: Ismat Ara / The Wire
Why the women?
The large number of female protesters has been a noteworthy aspect of the farmers’ march to Delhi. Bindu feels the time has come for women to go out in large numbers. She, like others, has brought with her cooking essentials and rations to last during the protest.
“The three laws enacted by the Modi government will impact women in a very different way,” Bindu said.
She says that although all indigenous people will be adversely affected by these three laws, women need to raise their voices more because the kitchen, which is considered their departments, will be “paralyzed with this law.”
“If farmers are affected, they will not be able to earn enough money to support their homes. This will affect women as they will have to control the portions of the food they cook, ”he says, adding that children will also ultimately be affected.
This is not everything. She says that when farms stop generating sufficient income, women will have to go out to work in areas where there are no guarantees for their safety.
Bindu, along with his family and others, left their home on November 25. Three days later, he is still not in Delhi. Until the time of this article’s publication it was still 30 km away. “They had sealed the borders, the police beat up the protesters, we had to stay behind considering the safety of all the women with us,” she says.
Near Mandi Dabwali, on the Punjab Haryana border, women farmers sit in a dharna. Photo: By agreement.
Hundreds of vehicles, thousands of men and women, but they all have three simple demands. “Withdraw the three agricultural laws, abolish the electricity bill (amendment) and bring in a new law that guarantees an MSP for farmers,” he says. Ultimately, their land is their main asset, he says.
The Electricity (Amendment) Bill of 2020 seeks to establish an Electricity Contract Execution Authority (ECEA) that will have the power of a civil court to resolve disputes related to power purchase agreements between distribution companies and generation companies electrical.
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