If Prime Minister Narendra Modi has triggered a farmer revolt with his new farm laws, a general sense of frustration at his policies and failed promises has attracted a wider segment of the poor to the protests at Delhi’s borders.
While the better-off farmers sitting on their tractor trolleys dissected the farm bills and the danger they posed, the landless labourers and daily wage earners gathered at the Delhi-Ghaziabad border with them complained of being duped with the promise of “
achchhe din (good days)” six years ago.
“
Sirf dhokha (Nothing but fraud),” said an indignant Khyali Ram, who had come from Ramuwala Ganesh village in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, about Modi’s electoral rhetoric.