Meet the foot soldiers ensuring neat and clean meals at Singhu

New delhi: At the Singhu border, one of the largest areas where farmers have been staging a dharna against the Centre's recently passed farm laws, langars or community kitchens are a common sight dotting the highway leading up to Haryana. However, what keeps them going are the several volunteers who ensure that protestors are served piping hot rotis and that cleanliness and basic hygiene are maintained around the space.

Tens of thousands of farmers continue to pour in from Haryana and Punjab and assemble at the Singhu border. While they are adding to the swelling borders of the national Capital, a consequence of the protests has been the large langars or community kitchens that run throughout the day, feeding protesting farmers, law enforcement officials, the poor and homeless people from nearby areas, journalists covering the protests and anyone who visits them.

Carefully picking up leftovers thrown by protesters at the langar set up nearby, Taranjeet from Kurukshetra said that he performs this job around nine times a day in order to keep the surrounding areas neat and clean. "Twenty-five volunteers have been deputed to regularly clean the area near the langar with brooms that have been allotted to each one of them," he said.

Apart from picking up the brooms themselves to thoroughly sanitise the area, Taranjeet and several other volunteers also help in serving food to fellow protestors at the langar. "We have our own brooms and plastic bags which we divide among each one of us so that everyone can do their bit," he told Millennium Post.

Another volunteer, Saurav Arora from Kapurthala, said, "After every round of serving, I and other volunteers assemble, roll up the mats and thoroughly clean the waste material, collect it in a plastic bag and dump it at a particular place for the MCD workers to pick up."

Serving halwa to a protestor, Anmol Singh added, "Since our langar runs throughout the day, the waste quickly piles up so we have to be constantly on our feet."

At another langar, Rajvinder Pal hailing from Rajpura in Punjab, said that he cannot give an exact figure as to how many times the cleaning operation is undertaken. "People keep coming so we are constantly cleaning the place," he said, adding, "There are plastic bags attached to tractors around every langar where people can dispose of the waste and other leftovers."

Meanwhile, Karamjot Singh from Ropar, while handing out bottles of mineral water to protestors, said: "We have garbage bags placed on either side of our langar and volunteers from our committee have been deputed separate areas where they are told to ensure that garbage does not pile up." Singh added that as per the footfall being seen at the protest site, "langars are ensuring that food does not go waste and leftovers are properly discarded at specific areas."

However, not only for the langars but protesters are also ensuring that strict hygiene is maintained at the protest site. Sweeping the space around his tractor, Kashmir Singh from Patiala said, "I have this habit of keeping the surroundings around me clean and hence pick up a broom and start cleaning whenever I see dirt lying around."