India
Fact Check: Old Photos Of Vintage Tractors Shared With False Narrative About Farmers' Protest
|Old photographs of antique tractors are making rounds on social media with the claim that the farmers are making tractors with steel wheels to overcome nails and iron spikes installed near protest sites.
Viral posts shared on social media claim that farmers are making tractors with wheels made up of steel to overcome the hurdles at protest sites. The viral posts include five different photographs of unique tractors and claim that the farmers are now preparing themselves for obstacles placed at Delhi borders by police.
This claim comes following the recent developments on the protest sites at Ghazipur (Delhi-Uttar Pradesh) border and Tikri border. Delhi police have fixed nails and iron spikes in order to prevent tractors from entering the area .
The viral photographs show tractors that are uniquely built with no tires or tubes. The wheels are made from steel which the post claims, the iron spikes and nails planted by the police wouldn't be able to tame.
The post has gone viral on both Facebook and Twitter. The same post has been shared multiple times on Facebook with the same caption.
A tweet that shared these photos says, "Tractors are being prepared without tire tube wheels as a response to the government planting spikes on the roads. This is the self-dependent (aatmanirbhar) India."
बिना टायर ट्यूब के चक्के तैयार किए जा रहे हैं ट्रैक्टर के
— Rajput Faisal Khan Pathan (@786FaisalKhan) February 3, 2021
सरकार द्वारा सड़कों पर कीलें लगाने का जवाब देने के लिए, साहिब जी यह होता है आत्म निर्भर भारत pic.twitter.com/DZ7udaLEzd
Claim:
The viral photos show the tractors with steel wheels to cross the obstacles of iron spikes and nails planted by the police on Delhi borders.
Fact Check:
The viral post includes five different photos which are all old photos and are not linked with the farmers' movement in India. These images have been analyzed and numbered as followed:
First Image
By doing a reverse image search on Google Images, a video from June 27, 2013, pops up with the same image of the tractor as the viral post as its thumbnail. The video at 1:32 shows the same exact image of the blue tractor.
The names on both the tractors can be noticed as TC29 New Holland by Empire Tractor (ET), this has been circled in the images below for comparison. Hence, confirming that the image from the viral post is an old image from 2013.
Image from the viral post (above), screenshot from the 2013's YouTube video (below).
Second Image
The second image of the green tractor is recognized to be John Deere's 1930s tractor Model A with Dragon-tooth steel wheels from a blog.
After doing a reverse image search, the tractor can be seen up for sale on sites like Amazon and Walmart. However, they do not deliver in India. Hence, confirming that the said claim made in the viral post isn't true with respect to this tractor.
The image used in the viral post (top), the blog (middle), and the non-availability of the tractor in India through Amazon (last).
Third Image
While doing a reserve image search for the third image, a YouTube video comes up showing the same still of the image as its thumbnail. This video was uploaded on July 18, 2019. Below is the comparison between the two, confirming this image is not related to farmers' protest.
The image from the viral post (top) and the thumbnail of the 2019 video.
The still from the YouTube video can be seen at 1:54. Hence, confirming that the image was lifted from the 2019 video and is not related to the farmers' movement.
Fourth Image
With doing a reverse image search for the fourth image from the viral post, a site for stock photos named Dreamstime comes up showing the Massy-Harris Model 55 farm tractor. The name has been circled and highlighted in the comparison down below. The image also included the watermark and logo of Dreamstime.
The image from the viral post (top) and the stock image from Dreamstime (below).
Fifth Image
This image was uploaded by a Tumblr user in his blog named 'Guns, oil and dirt' five years ago. The comparison below shows the image to be exactly the same.
All the comparisons between the images from the viral posts and the original images show that these are old pictures, most of the tractors not hailing from India and are being linked wrongly to the farmers' protests.
Therefore, the claim made in the viral post is false. Farmers are not making steel wheel tractors to march at iron spikes placed at the borders.
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