Donations keep UP Gate kitchen fire burning for all

From a stove below the UP Gate flyover comes out piping hot pakodis made of potatoes and cauliflower. Waiting patiently in line are dozens of farmers with plate

From a stove below the UP Gate flyover comes out piping hot pakodis made of potatoes and cauliflower. Waiting patiently in line are dozens of farmers with plate in hand for the Sunday breakfast.

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Alu-poori, kheer, vegetarian biryani and other meals are freely available round-the-clock to protesters and visitors. Villages in western UP keep supply flowing to the makeshift kitchen replete with tables for cutting vegetables and buckets of water for washing.

“Our ‘pakodis’ have become famous during these past 10 days.” said Deepak Malik, a farmer from Modinagar while stoking the wood fired stove. “We have about 41 35-litre cans of edible oil. Kheer is prepared from milk sent by nearby villagers. We have exhausted about 70 gunny bags of potatoes and nearly 100 gunny bags of fresh cauliflower.”

He said that at least one tractor-trolley arrives from Modinagar with fresh supplies and a similar supply chain is maintained for other kitchens around UP Gate that have come up since the protest began last Saturday.

“We even get LPG cylinders for our kitchens to run 24x7. There is no dearth of food here and it is coming in from other districts as well. We serve about 700 to 800 people daily. Many villages have setup kitchens and contracted food preparations to Halwais back home. They send freshly cooked food to the protest site through tractor-trolleys and pickup-vans,” said Sudesh Chaudhary, a farmer from Razpur in Ghaziabad district.

But how do farmers manage to get their supply going when many industries claim their businesses were suffering because of the protest and transporters refusing to ply troubled section.

“Transportation is not an issue. A tractor-trolley with Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) flag moves uninterrupted at toll plazas and highways,” said Shankar Singh Yadav, a farmer and district president of the BKU from Sambhal which is about 150km from the UP Gate protest site. “In our villages, we collect donations as money or food items like cans of oil, bags of rice, pulses and other items, for the protest.”

“We have two tractor-trolleys coming in from Sambhal and likely to reach here by Sunday evening. Such protests are like a mela (fair) and tyohaar (festival) for farmers and we enjoy every bit of it despite the odds,” he said while adding that well-off farmers and villages falling under the sugarcane belt of western UP contribute more on daily basis.

Mohammad Ikram, a small farmer from Badarkha village in Garhmukteshwar, said that their group has also brought in tractor-trolleys along with “Karigars” (caterers), utensils and food items.

“We offer food to everyone coming to the site. When donations from our village finishes, we go for another round of collection. So, food supply is never an issue with farmers. When we feed entire country, we can also sustain ourselves and our protest,” Ikram said, also a BKU member.

At the other protest site over the UP Gate flyover on NH 9, members of the Sikh community have also chipped in langars.

“We can sustain ourselves for months. So the government should remember that the protests will continue and take call on our demands,” said Rajbir Singh, state vice-president of the BKU.