Struggle is not new to Shajahanpur, a district in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh that has produced young martyrs — Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, and Thakur Roshan Singh — in India’s freedom movement. It is also known for the hardships of its farmers and the vast tracts of arable land that play an important role in feeding the country and its most populous State. Today, U.P. produces a little less than 30% of India’s wheat, more than any other State, as per government data.
Powayan Taluk, less than 30 kilometres away from Shajahanpur, is known as Mini Punjab, as most farmers here are descendants of those who came from the land of the five rivers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in search of cultivable land.
Avtar Singh, in his 70s, was one of them. Now bed-ridden, he arrived in 1972 from Gurudaspur with his family. Balwinder Singh, 38, his 6-foot tall, well-built son, remembers the difficult times his family had when crops such as wheat and paddy were new to the region.
