Bharpur Singh sits on sacks of paddy in a tin-roofed warehouse large enough to house several hundred cars. He is scrolling through his smartphone to kill time, and looks up occasionally to check whether anyone is calling him. He has come from Jatana Ucha village in Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district to sell his basmati at the mandi in Khanna, a town on the Grand Trunk Road from Amritsar to Delhi.
It is a Friday evening, and Asia’s largest grain market is numbing cold. Sudden icy winds from the Shivalik mountains in the north have plunged the temperature to 7 degrees Celsius from 18 degrees a few hours ago. “I am planning to go to Delhi soon to join the morcha (farmer protests),” says Singh, who is in his mid-forties. “The government has done us injustice.”
His face lights up as someone calls his name. A man transformed, he rushes for a tractor trolley parked nearby and brings a winnowing machine to remove dirt and chaff from the basmati rice he had harvested two months ago. It is a high-yield variety of basmati, known as 1121, that he had grown in a portion of his 10-acre farm. After winnowing, it weighs 30 quintals. It would be auctioned the next morning. The buyers are usually rice brand owners.
Known for its fragrance and length, the 1121 basmati costs ₹3,000 a quintal. It was developed in 2003, and it soon became a leading choice of farmers in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The 1121 basmati fetched more than ₹4,500 a quintal two years ago, before US sanctions hurt Iran—the biggest importer of Indian basmati.
Esta historia es de la edición January 10, 2021 de THE WEEK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición January 10, 2021 de THE WEEK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Trump And The Crisis Of Liberalism
Although Donald Trump's election to a non-consecutive second term to the US presidency is not unprecedented—Grover Cleveland had done it in 1893—it is nevertheless a watershed moment.
What Will It Take To Clean Up Delhi Air?
IT IS ASKED, year after year, why Delhi’s air remains unbreathable despite several interventions to reduce pollution.
Men eye the woman's purse
A couple of months ago, I chanced upon a young 20-something man at my gym walking out with a women’s sling bag.
When trees hold hands
A filmmaker explores the human-nature connect through the living root bridges
Ms Gee & Gen Z
The vibrant Anuja Chauhan and her daughter Nayantara on the generational gap in romance writing
Vikram Seth-a suitable man
Our golden boy of literature was the star attraction at the recent Shillong Literary Festival in mysterious Meghalaya.
Superman bites the dust
When my granddaughter Kim was about three, I often took her to play in a nearby park.
OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Meet G. Govinda Menon, the 102-year-old engineer who had a key role in surveying the Vizhinjam coast in the 1940s, assessing its potential for an international port
Managing volatility: smarter equity choices in uncertain markets
THE INDIAN STOCK MARKET has delivered a strong 11 per cent CAGR over the past decade, with positive returns for eight straight years.
Investing in actively managed low-volatility portfolios keeps risks at bay
AFTER A ROARING bull market over the past year, equity markets in the recent months have gone into a correction mode as FIIs go on a selling spree. Volatility has risen and investment returns are hurt.
