Over 500 of Indian women – including widows and mothers of farmers, many of whom were believed to have killed themselves over farm debt – joined the ongoing protest against the controversial farm laws, at the Tikkri border on Wednesday, 16 December.
Holding photographs of their kin, these women raised slogans against the new laws as they sat in protest near a separate stage set up by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU).
WHAT ARE THE PROTESTERS SAYING
The women, who joined the Delhi-Haryana border protest, said that the new law would “lead to more farmers ending their lives”.
“Our lives had stopped that very day. We just could not ever overcome the loss. Things got worse after that. We had to sell the two-acre land and my 16-year-old son is now working on someone else’s farmland. I still have to repay a loan of Rs 4 lakh,” said 56-year-old Jasbeer Kaur as quoted by Hindustan Times.
She lost her husband in 2015, after he was allegedly unable to pay his debts.
In an interview to news agency PTI, 65-year-old Mohinder Kaur (65), from Patiala, said her 19-year-old grandson ended his life in 2015 after their family was unable to afford their education.
THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE...
Almost 10,350 farmers and agricultural workers died by suicide in 2018, making up almost 8 percent of all suicides in India, as per the National Crime Records Bureau data.
A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) study conducted in 2019 said that farmers were taking on more agricultural loans than is required to meet cultivation costs, due to the prevailing price structure.
Over 50,000 suicides have taken place since 2006 in Punjab, the BKU claimed, adding that the new laws will lead to a spike in the number.
On Wednesday, a 65-year-old priest of a Gurdwara in Haryana allegedly killed himself at the Singhu border protest site. In his "suicide note", Sant Baba Ram Singh reportedly said that he was "pained by farmers’ plight".
According to Hindustan Times, Women’s Wing President of BKU (Ugrahan), Harpreet Kaur, said that the new farm laws will make the situation worse for these women and “trigger more suicides”, which is why they were requested to join the stir, “to make the government understand that farmers have been struggling for years due to anti-farmer policies”.
(With inputs from PTI, Hindustan Times)
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