How a farmers’ march in 2018 entered Anita Agnihotri’s newly translated novel in real time
‘I am walking along with hundreds of other writers in the country.’ An unemployed farm labourer with her sickle | Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
I had already written a sizeable portion of
The Sickle in 2018 when I found myself perturbed at visuals on the TV screen of innumerable farmers marching 180 kilometres barefoot from Nashik to Azad Maidan in Mumbai. I was able to see an underlying connection between the politics of droughts in Marathwada, the uncertain lives of migrant sugarcane labourers who are bereft of rights, the aftermath to the suicides of farmers in Vidarbha, and the march undertaken by tribal peasants.