Farmers' dharna at Tikri border takes new meaning for poor kids
Ravinder Saini
Tribune News Service
Jhajjar, December 23
Class V student Raj (12), son of a migrant labourer, doesn’t know the reason for which thousands of farmers are camping near his rented accommodation at the Tikri-Bahadurgarh border for the past 28 days. But he is happy, for he gets to eat different varieties of food thanks to langar started by farmers.
Like him, children of migrant labourers come to the protest site every morning and return in the evening. Their schools are closed because of Covid.
“My friends and I play hide and seek, drink tea, and eat biscuits, chapattis with ‘chhole’, sweets and fruits. We even take food home. No one stops us from doing that,” Raj says. Besides food, farmers have been providing children with woolen clothes.
When asked about the reason behind the farmers’ protest, Raj quickly responded: “They want to get the price of their crops enhanced.”
His friend Avinash interrupted him. “They are here with tractor-trailers as the government is not allowing them to reside in their villages,” he said naively.
Standing nearby was Class VIII student Sapna, holding a bag full of biscuits and other food items. “Children of my locality and those from nearby areas have been spending a good time here ever since the farmers arrived. My father also came here once to have langar,” she said.
Jai Tirth Singh, a farmer from Punjab, said that besides food, several protesters had also provided children and slum-dwellers with sweaters, jackets and blankets after seeing them shivering in cold.
“Some children raise slogans of ‘Kisan Ekta Zindabad’. They ask about the duration of our stay. I think they don’t want us to return,” said Jaspreet Singh, another farmer.
