#singhu border

With the farmers’ protest in India gaining international attention, there has been a spike in the assault on media organisations and journalists reporting on the issue. Delhi police picked up freelance journalist Mandeep Punia, a contributor to The Caravan magazine and Junputh news website, and Dharmendra Singh, a reporter with the YouTube news channel Online News India, from the farmers’ protest site at the Singhu border between Haryana and Delhi on 30 January. A video of the moment Punia was detained, which circulated on social media, shows the police violently manhandling him hours after he posted a video on Facebook narrating the protest events held by farmers over increasing privatisation in farming. Kerala-based freelance journalist Siddique Kappan was arrested in October last year under the UAPA for allegedly attempting to create social tension. He was arrested on his way to the Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh to report on the death of a 19-year-old Dalit girl. Another journalist, Prashant Rahi, has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for charges related to unlawful activities, waging war against the state and sedition.

The implementation failures of the PMKSNY are another conversation. Jagjit Singh says that there are farmers who have not received the money in their accounts at all. According to information received in reply to an RTI, over one million fund transfer failures were reported across the country under the PMKSNY scheme during the COVID-19 lockdown between March 23 and July 31. We went to meet one of those farmers who has never received money under the scheme. Gurbaksh Singh, who was at Singhu Border as well, says that he has not received any installment. He said that his account is linked and his Aadhar is also linked but no one is keen to solve why funds never reached him.