Indian Farmers Weather Eight-Month Protest on Highway

NEW DELHI - Farmers from North India have spent more than eight months at the longest-running protest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, turning several highways on the outskirts of New Delhi into temporary settlements. 

In winter they huddled in farm trailers. When winter gave way to a scorching summer, the farmers erected structures with bamboo and aluminum sheets on the road to shelter them from temperatures that touch 44 degrees Celsius in the Indian capital and equipped them with fans and coolers.    Now they are throwing tarpaulin sheets over the roofs to keep monsoon rains out of their shelters.   Holding firm on their demand that three farm laws passed last year to open agricultural trade to private companies must be scrapped, the farmers shrug aside the hardships of living on the highway through winter, summer and the pandemic’s ferocious second wave.