There is a concrete wall on the National Highway Number 44 between Ambala and Rajpura, literally dividing two states of Punjab and Haryana. On February 14, it completed one year. The wall is guarded round the clock by cops, lest it be broken.
Tens of thousands of commuters traveling between Delhi to northern parts of the country who have to cross Ambala/ Rajpura are subjected to unprecedented harassment and forced to make a detour through the narrow lanes in villages and long patches of un-metaled roads between the agriculture fields.
On the Punjab side of the concrete wall, there is a semi-permanent settlement of “protesting farmers”, who want to march to Delhi to force their demand of legal guarantee for the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for various crops.
The farmers were stopped at the Haryana border last year, lest they lay a siege around Delhi the same way they did in 2020. The Haryana government, in order to prevent any such movement, has constructed a concrete wall at the border.
Related to this is the long and unending “fast unto death” by a farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dhallewal, who has also been seeking legal guarantee for the MSP.
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The blockade does not come at any cost to the “protesting farmers”, who are camping and guarding the protest site by turns. Their routine is not disturbed. Their farming is not disturbed. They get a regular supply of ration at the protest site. The hutments they have built there have all the amenities. They have uninterrupted electricity supply. During winters there is proper heating arrangement and during the summer months they are using the air conditioners. For them it is a routine without any cost.
While the common people travelling between Delhi to Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and other parts of north India it is a harrowing experience, the blockade has also hit the trade and industry in the industrial cities of Ludhiana and Jalandhar. The footfall in the hotels in the holy city of Amritsar has also fallen. The taxi operators’ business has been reduced to half what it was prior to the highway blockade. People now prefer to travel by trains. Thankfully, the “protesting farmers” have not resorted to any prolonged rail blockade, although off and on they do stop trains.
As the detour makes the distance longer, the transport costs of industrial products have increased and their losses are nobody’s concern.
There are over a dozen Members of Parliament representing the areas that have been badly hit by the highway blockade. None of them has ever raised the issue in the parliament. Leave aside the parliament, none of them has even spoken a word about it. Instead, everyone is expressing “solidarity and support” with the “protesting farmers”, even when they have been holding lakhs and lakhs of people to ransom and subjecting them to undue harassment.
Both the Punjab and the central governments appear to be completely unconcerned about the “blockade”. There has been no effort from any quarter to lift the blockade and remove the concrete wall on the highway.
Imagine someone traveling from Delhi in his own vehicle and paying a hefty toll tax on the way only to find the road blocked with a concrete wall after crossing Ambala. This desperation cannot be expressed and explained by anyone except those who have to suffer it.
The Haryana government does not even bother to divert the traffic ahead of the “concrete wall” so that the commuters do not have to travel that distance and make a U-turn. There is nobody to guide the commuters towards the alternate routes.
Although some public interest litigations were also filed in the Punjab and Haryana High Court and there were appropriate directions for reopening the highway, nothing has happened on the ground.
Instead of exploring ways and means to open the highway, the government is busy appeasing the “protesting farmers” led by Dallewal. A special central team held a meeting with him and other farmer leaders in Chandigarh, which remained inconclusive.
Highway blockade is a non-bailable offence. Leave aside detaining those blocking the highway, the government has not even registered any case in the matter.
Although there is a lot of resentment among the common people against the prolonged blockade, yet none of the governments, whether the state or the centre, are taking any action.
Time has come for the governments to take firm action and secure the highways from being blocked. Even a daylong protest is unacceptable and here the highway has remained blocked for one full year.
The farmers are believed to be the biggest “electoral constituency” no political party or leader can afford to antagonise. That is the reason that even when everyone believes that the protesting farmers are completely unjustified in blocking the highways and subjecting millions and millions of people to undue and unprecedented harassment, nobody speaks against it.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had initially objected to frequent protests and dharnas by the farmers, while pointing out how much hardship it causes to the general public. But when everyone opts to be “politically correct”, he also avoided any such statements later.
Any coercive move against the road blockade will certainly be exploited by the opposition parties, which no government can afford. In the meanwhile, let the general public suffer and nobody knows for how long?
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