Indian farmers return home after yearlong protests

Thousands of Indian farmers cleared their protest sites on the outskirts of New Delhi, ending their yearlong demonstrations as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government repealed its controversial agricultural reforms.
Farmers from the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, where the country’s agriculture is concentrated, dismantled their camps in the capital where they have protested since last year against three laws passed in September 2020 that deregulated the agricultural sector.
After repealing the laws in late November, the government on Thursday also agreed to accept other demands that included the dropping of all legal cases filed against farmers over the demonstrations, the legalization of the minimum support price for agricultural goods, and compensation to the families of protesters who lost their lives over the past year. Celebrating their win on Saturday, farmers began returning home. “No doubt it’s a major democratic victory of common farmers,” Avatar Kaurjiwala, who arrived to protest in Delhi from Patiala district in Punjab, told Arab News.
Kaurjiwala, 55, was staying at a demonstration site in Delhi’s Singhu area since November last year. “From day one, we were adamant that we would make this government bend and accept our demand because the three farm laws were a threat to the survival of farming communities in India,” he said.