No faith in mainstream media, so protesting farmers publish their own newsletter

Farmers protesting at Singhu on Delhi’s border since late last month have started publishing a newsletter for themselves, the Indian Express reported. Named Trolley Times, the biweekly four-page Punjabi newsletter, with a page in Hindi, was launched on Friday by scriptwriter Surmeet Maavi and documentary photographer Gurdeep Singh Dhaliwal.

The paper carries news reports, opinion pieces, cartoons, and poems. It resulted from the “lack of faith the protesters have in mainstream media”, and is supposed to bring forth the “intellect of farmers”.

About 2,000 copies of the newsletter were printed on the first day.

Maavi told the Express that Trolley Times aims to convey “the message from the stage, the development in talks with the government, among other such reports” to the protesting farmers.

“I have been here from day one and noticed that the morchas at Tikri and Singhu borders are spread across several kilometres,” he explained. “Not everyone shows up to listen to the speakers on stage daily, they ask each other what transpired.”

Contributors to the newsletter include protesters, union leaders, and farm law experts.

Dhaliwal told the Express: “We put up a message on social media platforms and the word spread quickly. At first, we were worried about filling four pages but were overwhelmed with hundreds of emails…I have at least 300 emails, many I haven’t even been able to read yet.”