A traditional idol maker from Rourkela who has bicycled 1,400km to Delhi to join the farmers’ protest is making a clay tableau at the Ghazipur border to portray how the new farm laws would lead to the farmers’ exploitation.

“The three clay models (that form the tableau) are being painted. They will be on public display at the Ghazipur border from Monday,” Muktikanta Biswal, 32, who is camping at the site, told The Telegraph over the phone.

Biswal, who follows his family profession of making clay idols of deities such as Ganesh and Saraswati, said he was hurt by the government’s treatment of the farmers and decided he could best protest through his art.

“The attempt to stifle the farmers’ voice hurts me as an artist. So I have taken to this novel way of protest,” he said.

Biswal’s tableau will show two farmers yoked to a plough while a corporate leader stands near them, raising a whip.

“The two farmers actually represent bullocks. The plough is symbolic of how the corporate boss controls farming, and his whip symbolises the exploitation of farmers,” the idol maker said.

Biswal said he was “not a political person” and was not against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“But I’m disgusted at the ugly politics being played over farmers’ issues. Although I studied only till Plus II, I keep track of what is happening in the country,” he said.

So, he had set off from Rourkela on his bicycle on January 12, keen to meet and talk to farmers on the way to Delhi and “learn about the condition of farmers and the country itself”.

“I reached Delhi on January 29. The entire journey has been video-graphed so that no one can challenge my integrity,” Biswal said.

The government and its supporters have been trying to project the protesters as Khalistanis, Maoists or Opposition stooges.

It was during the bicycle journey that the idea of protesting through clay idols struck Biswal. He began making the idols last week, using clay from the Ghazipur protest site, where he is staying in a tent with other farmers.

“Although the quality of the soil was not good enough for idol-making, I somehow managed. But the work got delayed a bit because of this,” he said.

Asked why he had chosen the bicycle over a bus or a train, Biswal said it was partly a “protest against the rising prices of petrol and diesel”.

“A common man cannot afford to pay the increased (bus) fares resulting from the hiked fuel prices,” he said.

Besides, he said, the bicycle journey allowed him to interact with farmers on the way.

Biswal, a bachelor, spent Rs 6,000 on the journey from his savings. He said he didn’t face any problems during the trip except for being briefly stopped and questioned once by Uttar Pradesh police.

This is not Biswal’s first brush with activism. In 2018 he had walked all the way to Delhi to remind the Prime Minister of his forgotten promises to build a second bridge over the Brahmani river on Rourkela’s outskirts and upgrade the Ispat General Hospital into a super-speciality facility. The journey took him 72 days, from April 16 to June 27.

He had stayed in Delhi a few days, held a brief hunger strike at the Ramlila Maidan, spoken to the Delhi media and returned by train.

“His foot journey made an impact: work on the bridge and hospital began sometime later and is continuing,” senior Rourkela journalist Aurobindo Das said.