On Haryana Day: A much misunderstood state

When we were returning from our PhDs abroad, we prayed for jobs anywhere in India, but Haryana – "the land of aggressive Jats, khap panchayats and female infanticide!!" To our horror, this is where we found employment. For seven years, we lived in the university bubble, engaging only with students and faculty. Then came the pandemic!

As we grappled with a deserted campus and emptiness for months, we slowly ventured out into the neighbouring fields. Here we encountered the real Haryana: hard-working proud farmers, groups of brightly clad women walking together and children gathering fodder. They acknowledged us with nods first, then with invites into their fields.

Sitting on their charpoys near pump houses, they shared their stories.

One farmer who owns 20 acres encourages his sons to study. They are both very good students doing medicine and engineering.

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They also come to the field to run tractors, gather fodder and learn daily nuances of agriculture. Despite technical education in the city, they remain connected to their fields.

Pride in the land is palpable here. They don't just oversee their fields but are tillers of their own land. It's common to see young men in jeans feeding cattle or composting buffalo dung. Not working your own land and giving it away to someone else is seen as a disgrace.

We come across generosity, almost akin to kings. When asked if we could buy vegetables, we are told, "Aise hi le jao" (no sale here, take it anyways) and given a bag full of fenugreek. We are invited into the fields to pluck tomatoes and brinjals. We asked a farmer if we could lease a spot of land to grow and harvest our own vegetables with our kids. He laughed and told us, "The land will not decrease. Why will I charge rent? Just use what you need."

The academic community around us lives in Sonipat in isolation, yearning for the bright lights of the city. Employees of a private university set in the 'armpit of Haryana', they keenly feel the 'sacrifice' they are making. Colleagues from Delhi ask us with incredulity, "But what do you do here on the weekend?". Even Arundhati Roy described our university as "…a Stanford campus in the midst of the most unbelievable squalor you can imagine."

This shows urban ignorance and the poverty of imagination. The area surrounding our campus is a wealthy rural belt with super-fertile land and industrial agriculture. It's where the country gets its wheat and rice from, where the organic lettuce in the Greek salads on Delhi tables comes from. Haryana sees itself differently. Not as a place of squalor but as an unending source of food. They quote sayings like, "It's better to be born here, where even a dog sleeps with a stomach full."

When our daughters were toddlers, everyone assumed we would move to Delhi for their education and not want to raise girl children in Haryana. It is always difficult to reason with prejudice, but we wonder whether they know that down the road is the Rai Sports Academy which is training hundreds of girls in competitive sports. The sports culture, also unique to Haryana, might teach our daughters resilience, team spirit and rootedness.

When Delhi chokes on smog during the harvest season, blame is directed at the farmers, ignoring the poor air quality throughout the year caused by tailpipe emissions. Down To Earth reported that 500 million tonnes of crop residue is produced annually. Farmers cannot use all this excess stubble now – it was previously consumed by their livestock or turned into compost. Solutions proposed by experts also seem to lack the necessary context. One proposed solution is to employ more agricultural machines like zero till seed drills, which can be used directly to sow seeds in the previous crop stubble. While this sounds logical, upon inquiry, we found that the farmers do not widely use this technique, as there is a drastic drop in yield due to excessive weed growth. They are therefore compelled to burn the residue and till the land while preparing for the next crop.

The central government provides the Minimum Support Price (MSP) only for rice and wheat. Assured with this certainty of price, the farmers cultivate these crops on an industrial scale. It leads to monocropping and three cycles of crops in a year. This is also a type of fast food that we are consuming. A healthy society needs to consume diverse food grains and pulses. Hence the government must provide assurance and subsidies to a variety of food cultivation.

Urban ignorance and arrogance lead to bad agricultural policies that hamper progress and destroy the environment. As academics, liberal-left or environmentalists, we may hail the victory of the Punjab farmers against the central government. But can we identify with their struggles, pain and pride? The ignorance towards the culture of agriculture makes us eerily similar to the policymakers we criticise.

(Dalwai is a professor at Jindal Global Law School and Pakanati is a professor at Jindal School of International Affairs)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.