swarupa

The day started with farmers meeting at the school, in Durain village of Varanasi Disrict, where were staying last night. The pradhan of teh village who is also affectionately called as the masterji convened the meeting. It was also the meeting point of 2 yatras, One by Bharat Kisan Union [BKU] farmers in the region who were travelling from village to village in the 3 districts around Varanasi meeting farmers and the other was ours moving from state to state doing pretty much the same. More...

10.00 am : Meeting with BKU farmers at Dauli village, Varanasi 05.30 pm : Candlelight procession and Public meeting at Sultanpur 09.30... Read More

Today the yatra entered Uttar Pradesh, the second largest state in the country and one of the state with the largest production of wheat and sugarcane.We entered Uttarpradesh after cutting across the Valmiki Reserve Forest which borders Bihar, Uttar pradesh and Nepal. More...

The day started with Bihari hospitality – after a sumptuous breakfast, we set off for the first event of the day - a debate with the scientists at Rajendra Agriculture University, Samastipur. This is a special university, which refused to take up a GM maize trial for Monsanto last year. Dr. B.C. Chauwdhary, Director-Research chaired the dialogue between the University scientists and the Yatris. What was supposed to have been a 45-minute interaction got extended to hours of conversation which ended only around 2 pm. More...

The Yatra entered Bihar today and the 3-day trip in Bihar began with a public meeting at Srikrishna Vigyan Kendra, Patna. The meeting was attended by farmers, farmer leaders with various unions, students from schools and colleges, urban consumers, media representatives and an ex-Minister, ex-MLA and so on and was chaired by the Chairperson of the State Farmers’ Commission, Dr Upendranath Verma (an active person in his 90s), who was also a former Minister for Rural Development. More...

13th state, 51st day of the Yatra was marked by our entry into Jharkhand. It was another early start for the yatris where we all woke up before 4 am and left soon after, from “Basudha”. Everyone knew that it was going to be a long day ahead, since we were to leave for Patna, after the Ranchi programme. Some 700 kms in one single day to reach Patna in the early hours of November 22nd, at 2.20 am. We were witness to beautiful scenery and got to see the largest rainfed-paddy-growing state in India! More...

10:30 am : Citizens’ meeting at Srikrishna Vigyan Kendra, South west, Gandhi maidan, Patna 12:30 pm : Rally and prayer meeting near... Read More

11.30 am: Yatris pay homage at the Gandhi Statue 12 noon onwards: Public meeting at Gauss Memorial Centre

We camped in the office building of RCDC (our thanks to them for accommodating us) in a couple of rooms where the yatris slept in the small space cozily next to each other given the chill descending in the nights as winter comes in, it was not clear when the night ended and the day began! – the yatris were getting ready for November 12th by using the one toilet in the office in turns, as they took a bath and then went back to sleep since we had an early start scheduled. More...

We spent the night, whatever was left of it after traveling on a bad, ghat road from Visakhapatnam, in the campus of THREAD in Kokirigama in Koraput district. It was a wet night, with no lights and loud night sounds greeted us in the campus at around 12.30 am when we finally reached the campus. More...