Punjab: Poverty forced Resham to protest

Punjab: Resham Singh, the farmer who committed suicide by consuming poison at Haryana’s Shambhu border, always wanted a bigger piece of land, a dream that took away even the small piece of land he had. His brother-in-law Sukhdev Singh said the 52-year-old farmer had sold his two-and-a-half acres of land two decades ago to fulfil his dream of buying a bigger piece of land in Uttar Pradesh. “Since land prices were low in Uttar Pradesh, Resham sold his land here,” Sukhdev Singh said. Though Resham managed to buy some land in Uttar Pradesh, his purchase was mired in litigation.

His despair and loss brought him closer to the farm movement as he had been part of most farm protests. Dr MS Sidhu, former head of the economics department at Punjab Agricultural University, admitted that suicides are not very common outside Punjab’s Malwa region. “These happened mostly in the cotton belt. And about 75% of the suicides have been committed by marginal farmers, who own a third of the total land,” he said. Dilbagh Singh Pahuwind of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti said, “This incident has shaken all of us. Resham was finding it difficult to make ends meet, but committing suicide is not acceptable.”