NEW YORK: Ahead of International Women’s Day, Indian women farmers protesting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agricultural laws at New Delhi’s borders for over the past three months, have been featured on the international cover of the American ‘TIME’ magazine’s latest edition.
The article talks about how the women have been on the frontlines of the protest against the three farm’s laws, while outlining Indian Supreme Court’s observation that they should return home. In response, the women farmers - mostly from the rural states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh - scrambled onto stages, took microphones and roared back a unanimous ‘NO!’, the article further stated. Why should we go back? This is not just the men’s protest, asking women farmers.
We toil in the fields alongside the men. Who are we - if not farmers? Jasbir Kaur, a 74-year-old woman farmer from Rampur in western Uttar Pradesh, was quoted as saying. Jasbir Kaur, who is mobilising the farmers at the Tikri protest site, said women were often not seen as farmers and their labour is immense but invisible. Women are changing women here. They are claiming their identities as farmers, she added. This law will kill us, will destroy what little we have,” Amandeep Kaur, another, told ‘TIME’.
The women also stated they were disappointed to be considered mere care workers, providing cooking and cleaning services at these sites, and not equal to the other stakeholders. The cover page, titled ‘On the Frontlines of India’s Farmer Protest’, shows the women holding children, while raising anti-government slogans at farmers’ protest site at Tikri border. Women’s rights activist Sudesh Goyat was quoted as saying that she was the only woman from Haryana during the first few days of protests in Tikri. But after the court’s comments, more and more women have joined. They came with their families, she told the ‘TIME’.
