After langars serving food and beverages, including tea and lassi, thanks to a steady supply of vegetables plucked from their respective fields and desi milk from the livestock they maintain back home, protesting farmers are now making arrangements for their “own water” from the ground up.
As summer approaches and their gathering continues to swell, agitating farmers have begun installing submersible pumps on patches of land along the Bahadurgarh and Rohtak bypass.
Donations, collections
With donations from monthly pensions that many among them receive as well as collections made from households in their villages at the directions of the local panchayat, an estimated dozen of such pumps, to meet their water needs independently, are at different stages of completion and the creations of “many more” has been arranged, the farmers said.
“The earth provides not just food but also water. Recipients like us just have to make the arrangements. A government’s stubbornness is nothing in the face of the blessings of Mother Earth,” said Ishwar Singh Dhul from Pai village in Haryana’s Kaithal, overseeing the digging for one such pump at Pakoda Chowk near Rohtak bypass.
“Everyone has contributed whatever they could to arrange the pipes, water tanks and wages for the labourers. There are a lot of us, including me, who get pension of around ₹2,500 to ₹3,000 per month. I have contributed ₹500 and helped collect donations from other pensioners,” Dharampal Pai, 70, said.
From providing water for existing toilets to ensuring availability of water for bathing more than once a day, RO purification systems too are being attached to such set-ups to provide multiple litres of drinking and cooking water “for as long as they [the farmers] may need to wait” for the ongoing agitation to end.
As more women from their families join them in their tents by the roadside, arrangements will also ensure the creation of more ladies’ toilets and bathrooms.
Will help women
“Women from my village want to join the agitation. If they stay, they are forced to answer nature’s call either at someone’s house here or in the fields. After we make these arrangements, they will be able to stay with us here for longer periods,” said Simranjeet Singh from Bhatinda.
Virender Yadav, who runs a small business that provides submersible water pump installation services in Delhi’s Bawana, said he rushed to the Rohtak bypass with his team of four on Tuesday to try his luck at getting a client or two. He wasn’t disappointed.
“We just asked around and were commissioned to dig this one. Some others I know have dug around 10 to 12 of these. Till April, I’ve been told, the farmers want around 50 pump installations to be available to them,” he said.
The one Mr. Yadav was asked to create will provide water to a dozen potable toilets, two adjacent bathing areas and replenish, multiple times a day, thousands of litres of RO-purified water for drinking and cooking.
“Tell the government we aren’t going anywhere till our demands our met. We have enough provisions and now even water to last us till the next [Lok Sabha] elections in 2024. We have borne a winter on the streets and will bear a summer too,” said Rajpal Dhul Pai.