Behind the stage these youth supported the farmers in New Delhi

These 15 odd youth also updated the status of the protests in the social media, on a day to day basis. They included college students and employed persons and most of them with a farming background. “Without these farmers we cannot survive. So we played our part by extending support to them,” said a Petrochemical engineer. 

“We are students from various disciplines and are employed in various sectors. We had supported jallikattu protests in January and now also we continued our support to the farmers,” said another volunteer from Madurai. 

“We had sponsors ready to provide food and refreshment for a week. We did not accept sponsors for more than a week,” said a law student, who also coordinated the food arrangements. This youth from Karur travelled 44 km a day (up and down,) after college, to help the farmers. 

“We did not collect money from sponsors. We guided them to a fellow volunteer of the group who happened to be a caterer in Delhi. He prepared whatever food the farmers wanted. 

If it was a simple diet like idly or pongal we served them three varieties of chutney, sambar and kesari. On a couple of occasions on their request we had even prepared briyani,” said a fellow volunteer.

One of the students said that a few persons, who visited the protest venue, took pictures of the volunteers at work and shared it on the social media and began 

collecting money claiming that it was to sponsor food for the protesters. “We were shocked when we saw it,” he added.

“Sometimes they (farmers) asked suggestions about the kind of protest they could undertake. We were not in favour of the stripping protest and urine drinking protest. We collectively expressed our opinion but did not thrust our idea on them,” another volunteer said.

There were quite a few others who were helping the farmers. One of them was a nurse. Almost every protester aged about 60 years had fallen ill and needed hospitalisation. “She had attended on them round the clock, helped them recover and resume their protest. There were over a dozen doctors in AIIMS who were from Tami Nadu. They took turns to come here and attended on  the ailing protesters,” said another protester. 

Apart from these farmer supporters there were quite a few families who had regularly visited the farmers on condition of anonymity and provided them food and other support.