Farmers woo labourers as paddy season begins

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 20

A group of men from UP and Bihar is seen coming out of the city railway station. All they have is a bag which contains their belongings.

Looking tired, they are wearing ‘chappals’ (footwear), which are in a bad condition and not much helpful in protecting their feet from the heat. Donning simple old shirts and pants, they receive special treatment on their arrival in the city.

Such is the importance of lobourers these days. They are most important for state’s farmers during paddy sowing.

On Wednesday, when a train reached the city and labourers came out of the railway station, farmers greeted and started negotiating with them.

Some of the farmers from Nakodar have also been making rounds of the quarters where labourers are putting up. Their main objective is to convince them to work in their fields.

Farmers had to start sowing paddy from Wednesday (June 20), but in the absence of labourers, most of them have not been able to do the same. They are waiting for workers.

A farmer, who was at the railway station to look for labourers, said, “No one is more important than labourers for us. So, I am at the railway station to take labourers coming from Bihar and UP along with me.”

Mukhtiar Singh, a farmer from Jalandhar, was reluctant to waste a single moment in talking at the railway station as he did not want to lose them to others. He said, “We know their importance and we have been waiting for them for long. Now, as they have arrived, we cannot let them go.” Thereafter, Mukhtiar ran after two labourers who were seeking for an auto.

Be it industrialists or farmers, the labourers has always remained in great demand.

Vijay Kumar, a labourer, who just arrived in the city on Wednesday, said, “We had never thought that the farmers would come here for us.”

Satnam Singh Saini, a farmer, who is representing the Doaba Sangharsh Committee, said the problem of laboures shortage was getting worse every day.

“Many farmers are waiting for labourers now. Since there is a limited period for sowing paddy and it will ultimately affect the crop,” he said, adding that the work is done by labourers and no machine is involved in it so they are so important.