Bhikhiwind in Tarn Taran district is one of the towns of the border belt, between Khemkaran and Patti, in country that has been a frontier since 1947 and a battlefield twice.
Villages here have land beyond the fence, cultivated under Border Security Force escort through gates that open at set hours.
In 1965 the Khemkaran sector was the site of the battle of Asal Uttar, one of the largest tank battles of that war. Villages were evacuated and shelled and their people came back to rebuilt houses.
There is almost no industry in the belt for the same reason there is none at Batala: nobody invests within artillery range of a hostile border.
The Majha's border villages are the ones with the most military service per household in Punjab and the least of everything else.
Jaswant Singh Khalra, who documented the mass cremations at Amritsar and was abducted in 1995, was from Khalra, a village a few kilometres from Bhikhiwind on the road to the border.
The gates in the fence open on a fixed schedule. Farmers cross with identity cards, work under observation and come back before the gate shuts, so sowing, irrigation and harvest all have to fit inside those hours, and the crops chosen are the ones that tolerate it.
Compensation for land beyond the fence is paid at a fixed rate per acre and has been the subject of repeated protest as being far below what the same land would return if it could be farmed normally.