-Countercurrents.org More than half of rural households in India are landless, or almost so. This deprives them of the most obvious asset needed for sustainable livelihoods and food security in villages–farmland. After agriculture the next most important source of rural livelihood in India is dairy farming but here too the household with farmland has free access to crop residues which is increasingly not available to landless households who have to incur extra...
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In the farm laws protests, are Punjab’s landless peasants getting left behind? -Prabhjit Singh
-CaravanMagazine.in On 21 February, over one lakh farmers and agricultural labourers gathered at a rally in Punjab’s Barnala district to pledge unity in the movement against the 2020 farm laws. The rally was organised by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) and the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union, two of the biggest unions that represent the interests of the landless peasants and work in tandem with each other. The BKU (EU) president,...
More »'We Are One’: Why Punjab’s Landless Dalits are Standing with Protesting Farmers -Sandeep Singh
-TheWire.in As much at risk as the farmers if the laws are not repealed, the Dalits are also determined not to be used by the BJP to turn the protests against the new agriculture laws into an issue of landowners’ rights. New Delhi: On January 7, Thursday, when 2,000 labourers of the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union (PKMU) began their journey from Dabwali, Punjab, to the Tikri border between Haryana and Delhi to...
More »Don’t ignore the women farmers -Thamizhachi Thangapandian
-The Hindu The gender gap in the agriculture sector will only widen more with the current farm laws Eminent agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan once said, “Some historians believe that it was women who first domesticated crop plants and thereby initiated the art and science of farming. While men went out hunting in search of food, women started gathering seeds from the native flora and began cultivating those of interest from the point...
More »Prison of Poverty: Agri Workers’ Wages Have Barely Increased in Modi Years -Subodh Varma
-Newsclick.in No scheme touches them, no law reaches them – but they hope that a better deal for farmers will benefit them. At the Ghazipur border between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, Manish and a few of his friends have joined the farmers’ dharna only a few days back. They live in Baghpat district, barely a few dozen kilometres from the protest site but it could be another continent, or another age. “In the...
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