Agricultural workers from Bihar and UP left Punjab in droves during the lockdown. Looming ahead was the paddy season. What would farmers do? Those on whom they depended had all gone home. Yet, paddy was planted in record time, just before the monsoon. How did farmers manage it?
“We anticipated this problem. So we decided to try out a new technique of planting paddy which does not involve much labour,” says Gurpreet Singh Chandbaja, a farmer in Ferozepur’s Chandbaja village, who is clearly satisfied with the the paddy plants in his fields. . .