Chapter 389 Farmers
Devaram grew up in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. He was born into an untouchable family and belongs to the lowest level of the caste pyramid.
His memory of his childhood was one of exploitation and humiliation, and he didn't even have a pair of slippers.
At the village tea stall, he was not allowed to drink tea from the same cup as others.
In the early 1970s, when he was ten years old, he attended a meeting organized by a leader of a communist party.
At this time he dropped out of school and started working in the fields. He became a loyal member of the murder party.
He and other laborers were forced to work in the fields from four in the morning until ten in the evening, and their annual wages were only one thousand rupees.
Devaram and other members persisted in the strike for fifteen days, and nearly fifty nearby villages followed their example and organized strikes.
After the strike, they not only received a pay raise, but also received lunch for the first time in their lives, and were given a flashlight and a pair of rubber slippers for working at night.
In the mid-1970s, the police began to hunt down members of the jihadist gang, so Devaram had to leave his home and go to Lucknow.
"A lot of people suffered misfortune at that time," he said as he made a pistol shape with his right hand and "shot" himself in the chest.
"Then why do you dare to come to Lucknow?" Ron asked in surprise.
"I stayed there for only a few days before I hopped on a train and fled to Kolkata. I worked as a helper at a tea stall there, and in 1985 I took a ship to the UAE and became a construction worker."
"And he's been abroad." Ron nodded, looking at him with some admiration.
"I was causing trouble there too. They treated me like a beast of burden. I organised a strike and was subsequently expelled," Devaram said with a laugh.
Ron couldn't help but smile. This guy was a restless guy.
"Let's talk about Red Sorghum."
"Yes, sir."
Devaram said farmers in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, are heavily dependent on middlemen, known as seed traders.
These traders buy agricultural products from farmers and sell them to buyers elsewhere in India, deciding what crops farmers there grow in which seasons.
In this way, the agricultural production process is reversed.
First, foreign buyers decide what crops are needed, and then seed traders tell farmers what to plant.
Seed traders have also replaced the functions previously performed by state governments, including distributing seeds, fertilizers, and even lending money to farmers to help them pay for the purchase of agricultural inputs.
“Previously, state-owned seed companies managed these matters. After Mayawati came to power, she banned them and appointed a few seed vendors to be in charge.”
"They are all in the same group and have taken the money." Devaram was very sure.
Ron nodded and said nothing. Insider trading was very common in India.
In short, a few months ago, about 25,000 farmers in the Heldoi region chose a crop called red sorghum and signed an agreement with the largest local seed dealer, Rashid Ansari.
The businessman promised to pay them a very high price to purchase the red sorghum that would mature in the future.
However, after the farmers harvested the sorghum a few days ago, Ansari tore up the contract, refused to transport the sorghum, and refused to pay them.
The farmers were anxiously guarding piles of unsold red sorghum. The autumn planting season, the most critical season of the year, was approaching, but they had no money to buy the materials.
As a result, the farmers began to become restless, and many of them left their villages and marched in the city of Herdoi to demonstrate.
They gathered outside the district government office, but the operation dragged on and had little effect.
So they gathered in Lucknow today, early July, to organize a general mobilization of the entire nation for a demonstration.
At dawn, before daybreak, thousands of farmers poured into Lucknow and gathered outside the Town Hall, making an unstoppable force.
Devaram was one of the organizers and he was good at it.
Around eight o'clock in the morning, nearly 10,000 farmers marched on the main road. By then, Ron had already gone to the suburbs.
A police team drove over to check the situation, but the farmers surrounded their jeep, forcing them to abandon it and flee.
The angry crowd set fire to a police jeep and two vehicles of the tax bureau, and then a group of people turned right into a small road.
There were a few houses scattered along the road, and the group arrived at the door of seed merchant Rashid Ansari.
Ansari was a well-known middleman and he also had a residence in Lucknow.
However, Rashid was not in the house. The farmers surrounded the house, forced the tenants to leave, looted the house, and finally burned it down.
The police tried to intervene but the crowd threw stones and bricks at them, forcing them to take cover behind a nearby house and fire at the crowd.
One man was shot in the ribs and three others suffered minor injuries.
But the devastation continued, with some people leaving the main road and heading in another direction, burning the house of another seed merchant, Mayipal Ansari.
That’s right, these are two brothers, both in the seed business.
After venting their anger, they gathered at the intersection of Highway 7 and Highway 16 on the edge of the city, sat on the ground, and interrupted road traffic.
Well, that's where Ron is stuck now.
Following the direction of Devaram's finger, Ron could see Rashid Ansari's residence.
To be more precise, it was a mansion that was three stories high.
There are fluted columns, marble floors, long staircases, and numerous terraces.
Although Rashid Ansari's design seems to have been inspired by a famous Bollywood movie he had seen.
But this opulent building is actually the palace of a Venetian merchant, and many of its structures were transported from suburban Florida.
Now the white walls have been burned black by the fire, and only empty frames remain where the doors and windows used to be.
The iron gate that once protected the mansion has long since disappeared, pulled away by angry farmers on ox carts and sold as scrap metal.
To protect the mansion, police even tried wrapping it in iron sheets and then chaining it up.
But the farmers were unstoppable and the police measures were ineffective.
The fire has been extinguished, and the mansion is now in ruins, with scattered debris all around, making this once magnificent mansion look very inconsistent.
Apart from this, the mansion seemed to have been airlifted to a deserted place, with only a few small concrete houses scattered around.
The houses imitated the style of Rashid Ansari's house, but on a much smaller scale.
There were no streets, no lights, no parks, not even a slum that was less rough and barren.
On the other side, the gate of Mayipal Ansari's residence was still intact, and a smashed black Ford Taurus was parked in the circular driveway.
The sloping roof was covered with red tiles, the white walls here had been burned black, and the doors and windows were gone.
Now there was only a bearded old man left in the house, who was furiously cleaning up the debris on the second-floor balcony, as if only in this way could the dilapidated mansion beneath his feet regain its former glory.
Both mansions were once magnificent, but now it is not difficult to see how badly they have been damaged.
"Mr. Soul, the farmers aren't deliberately rebellious; they're just desperate. The autumn planting season is just over a month away, and they haven't even paid off their debts from last year, let alone seeds.
They can't survive. Before coming to Lucknow, more than 600 farmers committed suicide by drinking pesticides. This stuff is readily available in the countryside, even if they have nothing else."
Devaram said that there are hundreds of families behind these farmers who committed suicide, and more people will continue to die in the next year.
The actual death toll is definitely more than 600, possibly thousands.
But the police have identified and recorded perhaps only 600, because they only count male users with registered land as farmers when they make statistics.
So the figures do not include women, nor do they include serfs who were hired to work on other people's land.
In short, six hundred is the most conservative number.
Not only Ron was silent as he listened, but Satya beside him couldn't help sighing.
"Devram, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Mayawati has fallen, and now the BJP is in power in Uttar Pradesh."
"Sir, if the government doesn't care about them, how are these 25,000 families going to survive? They just want to survive, but they can't find a way out."
For farmers, it may not make any difference whether Mayawati or the BJP comes to power.
Because no government cares about their lives, and the police even help the rich guard their homes.
Although there is a big fuss today, the farmers actually know that in the end they will probably not get any promises.
They were used to it and came to Lucknow to burn down the Ansari family's house just to vent their anger.
If you keep it in your heart for too long, it will easily become smelly.
Devaram stood there with his eyes wide open. Ron was about to say something when someone suddenly shouted.
"Mr. Soul!", "It's Mr. Soul from the Land of Light!", "The Great Mr. Soul!".
The crowd surged forward, and everything happened so fast that Anil repeatedly directed the car to move back, but it was too late.
There were so many people that they surrounded the place tightly in an instant.
Ron motioned him to be patient and glanced at Devaram outside the car door. The latter immediately pushed back the crowd, leaving a small space around the car door.
Ron got out of the car and the crowd immediately burst into cheers.
It was hard to say before, but now almost half of Indians know him.
The wedding of the couple and Isa recently made headlines and was played over and over again on TV.
His face is now more recognizable than Bollywood stars, and it is no exaggeration to say that he is a household name.
Sur's reputation in Uttar Pradesh is even more extraordinary.
Look what they just said, the Land of Light!
The names of "the crazy east" and "the filthy place" are gone forever.
Now Pufancha District has become the envy of most people, with newly built roads, affordable hospitals that are about to open, and dredged irrigation canals.
The most important thing is a large number of job opportunities, with good salaries, job security, and jobs that will not make you be treated like a slave.
Mr. Sule’s reputation is so good that when the farmers see him, it’s like seeing the light!
(End of this chapter)
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