In the middle of December, farmers on Delhi’s Tikri border protesting the three new agriculture laws were joined by hundreds of women farmers from Punjab’s Malwa region. They came in 17 buses and 10 tractor trolleys, nearly 1,000 of them, to demand that the ‘‘black laws” be repealed.
As they descended from the vehicles, the women held union flags. But many also clutched something else – large and small photo frames held tightly against their chests. These were the portraits of their sons and husbands who had died by suicide over the years when they were unable repay the farm debt.
When they held the grainy pictures high, a wave of corpses rose. The voice of Joginder Singh Ugrahan, the farm leader, reverberated from the makeshift podium. “The debt-ridden families have been carrying their dead on their shoulders,” he said. “With the new laws, the crop of suicide will only swell.”
While the government contends that the new laws will ensure that farmers…