For just over two months, tens of thousands of farmers from various parts of India have been protesting at Delhi’s borders against three new farm laws.

They fear that the laws will open the agriculture sector to corporate control and undermine their livelihood, even as the government insists that it will improve their lives.

In the initial days of the protest, the farmers were met with water cannons, tear-gas shells and baton-charges by the police. After a stand-off, state action against the protestors has intensified since Republic Day, when a small section of farmers broke away from the pre-agreed route of a tractor rally and entered the Red Fort complex.

Since then, the authorities have shut down the internet in protest areas, cut off electricity and water supply and erected concrete barricades on the borders – even embedding metal spikes in the road in some places.

These brutal measures have attracted widespread attention, including that from international personalities like climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg and pop star Rihanna.

Here is how Indian cartoonists are seeing the situation.

Also watch

Police use concrete barricades, nails on roads, to isolate farmers’ protest sites

Read

‘Temptation of sensationalist social media,’ says Centre after foreign celebrities back farmers