Why India’s protesting farmers aren’t going home

At a certain point at the northern edge of India’s capital, New Delhi, the highway abruptly gives way to police barricades. Usually busy with vehicles making their way to the neighboring state of Haryana, traffic now comes to a dead stop. Stretching for miles after that are trucks and tractor-trailers that thousands of farmers used to get here, now parked to block the so-called Singhu border between states in protest. 

Huddled with a few others in the rear of one of these tractor-trailers on a chilly December evening is Ram Singh, a wheat and rice farmer from Bhodi village in Haryana. He traveled about 140 miles to join this weekslong protest, demanding