Why Nodeep Kaur, Dalit labour activist part of farmer protest, is behind bars for a month now
Nodeep Kaur is a member of Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan that joined farmers protest at Singhu to air grievances about alleged non-payment of salaries and harassment by employers.
Taran Deol 8 February, 2021 9:00 am IST Text Size:
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New Delhi: Until December 2020, Nodeep Kaur, a 24-year-old from Punjab, worked at a firm in the Kundli Industrial Area (KIA) in Sonepat, which lies just about 3 kilometres from the Singhu Delhi-Haryana border.
Since her arrest on 12 January, the young Dalit labourer has become the face of a labour rights campaign that has run parallel to the farmers’ protest.
Why women farmers cannot be left out of the protests against the new farm laws
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The new Acts will have a gendered impact, especially on small and marginal holdings
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A contingent of women farmers from Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) of Punjab at Tikri Border, New Delhi. | Photo Credit:
Sanskriti Talwar
The new Acts will have a gendered impact, especially on small and marginal holdings
The Chief Justice of India, while hearing a bunch of petitions on the new farm laws, asked, “Why are women and elders kept in the protest?” He was referring to their presence in the agitations against the new farm laws and he went on to ask them to leave the protest sites. This paternalistic outlook not only denies women the agency to protest, it also erases the crucial role of women in the agriculture workforce, an erasure that is mirrored in official recognition, data and policies.
âWe Are Oneâ: Why Punjabâs Landless Dalits are Standing with Protesting Farmers
As much at risk as the farmers if the laws are not repealed, the Dalits are also determined not to be used by the BJP to turn the protests against the new agriculture laws into an issue of landownersâ rights.
Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union awareness campaign on Central farm laws in Charnathan village of Bathinda. Photo: By special arrangement.
Rights07/Jan/2021
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 protest the new farm laws, a new history began to unfold.
Quieter but still present: Landless labourers say have much to lose
A resident of Fazilka district, Dev Singh s life trajectory, in many ways, mirrors the plight of Punjab s landless labourers, managing to eke out a living wholly dependent on those owning tracts of land. Updated: December 24, 2020 7:47:30 am
Dalit Farmers seeking advice. (Express Photo)
His kurta a little crumpled, chappals worn out, eyes sunken and voice diffident, Dev Singh is not quite like the archetypal Punjabi farmer feisty and boisterous.
A Mazhabi Sikh, categorised as Dalits, Dev Singh represents the large community of landless agricultural labourers at the capital’s doorstep, eager to make a point against the three farm laws by their quiet presence.
Natasha Badhwar
Where are you from? Where do you belong? As children growing up in Ranchi and later Kolkata, my brothers and I had learnt that the correct answer to this question was “Punjab”. We did not understand at that age why we were asked this question so frequently. We were a migrant family, but children don’t see demarcations in identities till we teach them differences.
On the other hand, when we would actually visit our grandparents and extended family in the small towns and villages of Punjab during our school vacations, we would be asked the same question with equal curiosity. In this context, the correct answer was no longer “Punjab”. We stood out as Hindi-speaking children from a non-Punjabi, urban culture and were now identified by the city where we lived and went to school.