Bathinda: In order to promote public awareness and and highlighting the about the deplorable plight of the farmers across the country and raising funds for suicide-hit farm families, NGO United Sikhs in partnership with UK-based NGO Nomadic Lion started a 6,000km walk from the coastal town of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on Saturday.
The walk is expected to culminate by May 2018 after passing through 13 states of the sub-continent.
“The theme of the walk is rescue a family by providing compensation to suicide-hit farm families and spread joy by sharing million smiles for making life of the aggrieved families easier. The walk will also raise awareness about sustainable agriculture and connect farmers directly to consumers,” reads the statement of Nomadic Lion founder David Atthowe from Kanyakumari, published in an English vernacular.
Youth activist Navjot Kaur Lambi, and ‘humanitarian ambassador’ of United Sikhs, also participated in the walk being undertaken by eight member activists of Nomadic Lion and United Sikhs.
“Nomadic Lion will aim to raise awareness as they progress on the walk via their website, social media activities, engaging local people from villages and documenting the current condition of farmers in the country. Nomadic Lion have successfully completed three walks covering three countries covering a distance of 3,650 km,” social activist David Atthowe reportedly said.
“We will be spending the next one month walking through Kerala before continuing on to Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat and finally finishing the first five-month section at Ajmer in Rajasthan in December 2017. We will start again in January 2018 in Kolkata, walking all the way across to Amritsar via Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab,” he further maintained while giving out his route details to the media persons.
The Director of the United Sikhs NGO Mejinderpal Kaur while interacting with the media in Kanyakumari stated that “Farmers across the country, including Punjab, are committing suicides due to various reasons, especially debt. Apart from apprising people of the country about the plight of suicide-hit farm families, United Sikhs will raise money to support the widows of those who had ended their lives due to mounting debt.”
Moreover, Navjot Kaur added that “I will be walking from time to time, taking off from studies in the coming 10 months. I will join the walk when it enters Punjab in April-May 2018.”