The collective leadership of the protesting farmers on Monday called for a nationwide “chakka jam (road blockade)” on Saturday for three hours to protest against the Centre’s repression, reduction in budgetary allocation for agriculture and the three farm laws.

Yogendra Yadav of the Jai Kisan Andolan said the allocation for agriculture and allied sectors had been reduced by Rs 6,000 crore from last year’s. Also, agriculture’s share of the entire budget has been reduced from 5.1 per cent last year to 4.3 per cent.

The “chakka jam” called by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha seeks to tap into the anger in the farming community across the country, especially in north India, over the manner in which farmers are being treated.

The collective leadership has appealed to farmers across the country to block the national highways and state highways in their vicinity.

More and more panchayats across Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan have issued calls to join the protest and boycott the BJP. A mahapanchayat held in Bijnor in the Rohilkhand area of Uttar Pradesh on Monday drew huge support.

Photographs from these gatherings across north India show huge crowds, providing a clue to why the government is turning the three protest sites around Delhi into heavily barricaded open prisons. If the heavy barricading is meant to double as psy-ops to keep people away, it is not working as there is a steady flow of people joining daily.

All three border sites around Delhi — Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur — appear even more barricaded than the international border with a mix of concertina wires, several layers of concrete barriers chained together and cemented, tyre busters and roads dug up almost like moats around medieval forts.

“Our own government is treating us like enemies,” said Darshan Pal of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha.

“What an irony. The government is digging up existing roads and making budgetary allocations for building new ones,” a retired Delhi police officer said, referring to the allocations for road projects in Monday’s budget.

The railways have begun diverting trains from Punjab carrying farmers headed for the protest sites, veteran farmer union leader Balbir Singh Rajewal said.

The nature of the barricading drew comments on social media that if this had been done along the Line of Actual Control, China would not be sitting on Indian territory.