Day after chakka jam, protest spots are back online
NEW DELHI: A day after farmers organised a nationwide “chakka jam” for three hours on national highways demanding the repeal of the farm laws and protesting the arrests of farmers, frequent internet shutdowns and barricading at the agitation spots, farmers at Singhu, Tikri, and Ghazipur said network connectivity had improved on Sunday.
However, the Internet blackouts made it difficult for protesters to access and disseminate information, and stay in touch with their families across Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, forcing agitators to devise workarounds to ensure information flowed unrestricted.
Internet services at Delhi’s borders were suspended following the violence that ensued during the tractor parade on January 26. After this, internet connectivity at agitation spots remained poor.
Another set of orders were passed to snap the services between 11pm on January 29 (when a group of persons claiming to be locals entered the protest area and clashed with protesters) till February 2. Another ban was imposed on February 6, when farmers undertook their chakka jam, but Internet services were restored at midnight that day.
Gurjant Singh (36), a resident of Bari village in Mohali, who returned to the Singhu protest site on Sunday after spending three days in his village said his family was relieved after he shared messages on WhatsApp with them.
“Following the Republic Day violence, it became difficult to stay in touch with my family, who want to know what is happening here. There are so many rumours floating around but we can’t counter them because we don’t have Internet access. We tried to get a WiFi connection, but service providers told us the authorities were not allowing new connections at Singhu border,” he said.
In the absence of mobile internet, the only source of current information was around 5,000 copies of regional newspapers, which were paid for by the organisers. Even the press conferences by farmer groups that were broadcast live on social media platforms, had to be first recorded and then uploaded later using WiFi hot spots set up by some farmer groups nearly a month ago. Several volunteers at the protest site travelled a few kilometres away from the protest spot to get connectivity.
Sukhwinder Singh (28) a farmer from Rupnagar district in Punjab who volunteers at the library-cum-cultural centre at Singhu, said, “Some of us have bikes, so we travelled to an area where we could get network and access news on protests.