Joydip Mitra

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

large_01-DSC_2465_00097-JM.jpg

medium_01-DSC_2465_00097-JM.jpg

small_01-DSC_2465_00097-JM.jpg

thumbnail_01-DSC_2465_00097-JM.jpg

01-DSC_2465_00097-JM.jpg

“I don&#39;t own farmland, nor did my ancestors,” says Kamaljit Kaur. “But still, I am here to help our farmers in my small way, because I fear that if I don&#39;t, I will have to counter corporate greed to put something on my kids&#39; plates.” Kamaljit, 35, is a teacher from Ludhiana city in Punjab, and along with a few friends she is running two sewing machines in a shaded space at Singhu. They come to the protest site in turns, three days at a time, and fix for free missing shirt-buttons or tears in salwar-kameez outfits of the protesting farmers. Around 200 people turn up every day at their stall. At Singhu, such sewa is available in many-hued and very generous forms – all as offerings of solidarity with the protests. Among those serving are Irshad (full name unavailable). In a narrow nook outside the TDI mall in the Kundli industrial area, some four kilometres from the Singhu border, he is vigorously massaging the bare head of a Sikh protestor. Many others are awaiting their turn. Irshad is a barber from Kurukshetra, and says he has come here out of a sense of biradari – brotherhood.Also on this route, sitting outside his mini-truck, Sardar Gurmik Singh has gathered around him many seeking a free massage to relax their aching muscles, after the long hours of travel in crammed trolleys from Punjab to Singhu. “They are going through so many other kinds of pain right now…” he says, about what brought him here to help. For Surinder Kumar, a doctor from Chandigarh, sewa has taken on the form of running a medical camp at Singhu, along with other doctors. This is one of numerous medical camps at the protest site – some run by doctors who have come here from as far as Kolkata or Hyderabad. “We are trying to abide by the pledge we took while graduating – by tending to the aged exposed to this biting cold day after day, many staying on open roads,” says Surinder.

To help keep morale high, Satpal Singh and his friends from Ludhiana have transported to Singhu a massive sugarcane-crushing-machine mounted on an open truck. These machines are usually used in sugar mills – at the protest site, the crusher brought by Satpal churns out sweet fresh juice for all who pass by. They use a truck-full of cane every day, bought with donations collected in Aliwal, their village in Ludhiana district. And on the lawns of the same mall in Kundli, Nihang Amandeep Singh from Bhatinda, while bathing a black stallion, says he is at Singhu to protect Punjab’s agrarian economy. Apart from serving food at a langer near the mall to anyone who comes by, Amandeep and others (all of them Nihangs, who belong to Sikh warrior order) engage in kirtans every evening, near the tents they have pitched in the shade of containers used by the Delhi Police as barricades. Gurvej Singh from Amritsar, a student at Punjab University, along with other students, distributes a bi-weekly newsletter, Trolley Times, among the farmers camping at Singhu. They have enclosed a wide space with cloth and plastic sheets and placed paper and pens there for anyone to come in and write slogans for a poster – an exhibition of these posters is always on there, and they also run a free library. Members of the Ambedkar Students&#39; Association from Punjab University also run a free library at Singhu, and they produce posters too (see the cover photo on top).At nightfall, when we walk back to Kundli from the Singhu border, we stop many times to warm ourselves at fires around which sit various groups together. We also visit Baba Gurpal Singh at his tent on that road and receive cups of tea that he always keeps ready. Baba Gurpal, 86, is a renunciate and granthi at Khanpur Gondiya Gurudwara near Patiala. He is a learned man, and gives us a history lesson on Sikh identity-based politics, and how this protest by farmers has crossed those limitations by becoming a pan-Indian movement for the greater common good. I ask why Baba Gurpal why he, along with his elderly companions, is doing sewa at Singhu, serving tea to all for eight hours a day. Looking at the nightscape of collective smoke and fire, he replies, “It is time for all of us to come out and to do our part, as this has now become a direct conflict between Good and Evil. This is what happened in the epic war of Kurukshetra.”

02-DSC_1723_00110-JM.jpg

03-DSC_2252_00033-JM.jpg

04-DSC_2726_00203-JM.jpg

05-DSC_1603_00080-JM.jpg

07-DSC_1908_00181-JM.jpg

08-DSC_1892_00173-JM.jpg

09-DSC_1867_00164-JM.jpg

10-DSC_1911_00182-JM.jpg

11-DSC_2853_00255-JM.jpg

12-DSC_1920_00184-JM.jpg

13-DSC_1994_00211-JM.jpg

14-DSC_2214_00019-JM.jpg

15-DSC_2011_00219-JM.jpg

16-DSC_1450_00038-JM.jpg

The many-splendoured sewa network at Singhu

ಸಿಂಘು: ಅನೇಕ ಅಮೂಲ್ಯ ಸೇವೆಗಳ ಜಾಲ

സിംഘുവിലെ ബഹു-മികവാർന്ന സേവന ശൃംഖലകൾ

સિંઘુમાં ઘણી સેવાઓનું  શાનદાર નેટવર્ક

বিচিত্র সেবায় সিঞ্চিত সিংঘুর প্রতিবাদস্থল

சிங்குவில் பல அற்புதமான சேவை தொடர்புகள்

ਸਿੰਘੂ ਵਿਖੇ ਕਈ ਸ਼ਾਨਦਾਰ ਸੇਵਾਵਾਂ ਦਾ ਨੈੱਟਵਰਕ

ସିଂଘୁରେ ବିବିଧ ଚାକଚକ୍ୟରେ ଭରା ସେବା ନେଟ୍‌ୱର୍କ

सिंघु में कई शानदार सेवाओं का नेटवर्क

سنگھو میں کئی شاندار خدمات کا نیٹ ورک

सिंघुच्या सीमेवरची विलक्षण सेवा आणि सेवेकरी

Sonipat

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


আমাদের সম্বন্ধে জানুন

পারি’র দুনিয়ায় স্বাগত

আমাদের যাবতীয় লেখাপত্তর নিখরচায় ব্যবহার করা যায়, আর আগামীদিনেও এই নিয়মই বজায় থাকবে। আমাদের কাজকর্ম ভালো লাগলে আপনি স্বেচ্ছাশ্রম দিয়ে অথবা অর্থ সাহায্য করে এই কাজে সহায়ক হতে পারেন।

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

The many-splendoured sewa network at Singhu

From a 'turban langar' to tailors, trucks fitted with charging ports and mirrors, free laundry, massages, shoe-repairs – a very wide range of non-farmers are at Singhu too, offering solidarity through such services

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit