By Pijush Banerjee
THE insecticide was there in the house
to prevent infection of aphids on mustard seeds. But Gudu Murmu had no
intention whatever of spraying it on the mustard seeds. The marginal farmer
from Bhatar poured it into his own throat.
The cost of the insecticide bought
from a local fertiliser shop is still due to be paid. The onus is now on Ram
Murmu to repay his father’s debt.
100 grams of the pesticide costs Rs
180. Mustard aphids, a type of little bug, infest the mustard seeds. The cost
of the insecticide has now got added to the liabilities to the fertiliser shop
incurred for the potato cultivation.
Even the poison consumed by farmers to
commit suicide is bought in debt. The administration of the Mamata Banerjee
government has suggested such distressed farmers to store 150 sacks of rice in
their hamlets.
Ram Murmu, the son of the farmer who
committed suicide was expressing his anguish, “Is the government out of its
heads? We would have no troubles whatsoever if we could have had 150 sacks of
rice in our house.”
Two sons of Swapan Kundu had to
relocate to Chandigarh from Khanakul to work for a jeweler. Daily hard work
from 10 am to 9 pm earns them a monthly salary of Rs 2000, with the owner
bearing their food and lodging expenses.
Swapan Kundu, a potato farmer from
Khanakul, committed suicide after failing to cope up with distressed selling.
After enquiring about his death, the
Mamata Banerjee government had inferred that his sons are ‘well-to-do’. Soumen
Kundu, the elder son, after returning to his village on learning his father’s
suicide commented, “If the family is well-to-do, who on earth moves to Chandigarh
for a meager Rs 2000 monthly salary? I am only 25, and my father was 55 years
old. You must understand that why I had to leave my family and state at this
age.” But who is there to understand the agony of the son of a farmer who has
committed suicide?
Swapan Kundu’s wife has to take
insulin twice a day. With liabilities worth Rs 1,18,000, her sons are now
striving to obtain the life-saving drug to keep their mother alive.
Starting from March 4, the harvesting
season for potatoes, 16 farmers have taken recourse to suicide in 20 days. The
spate of fatal suicides was mainly concentrated in high yielding potato
production areas of Hooghly and Burdwan, a few from Howrah, Birbhum and West
Midnapore. What started as distress sale has reached to the proportion of no
sale at all within 15 days, driving thousands of farmers into unprecedented
crisis.
Farmers would commit suicides on
account of distress selling, in a state where ‘Mati Utsab’ (soil festival) is
annually organised at the whim of the chief minister! This year, the government
has also organised the ‘Matitirtha Utsab’ after the ‘Mati Utsab’. In such a
festive springtime, farmers are getting killed due to distressed selling, and
being unable to repay debts.
So, the government has discovered that
Gudu Murmu, the marginal farmer from Bhatar, had no debts. Actually, a marginal
farmer like him is not even eligible to take loan. He has cultivated on a
contract basis in just 17 katha land. ‘Showing’ 150 sacks of rice in his house,
the government has concluded that he was a habitual drinker of country liquor.
No representative of the government has as yet reached even the villages where
farmers have committed suicides.
Gudu Murmu had taken two bighas of
land on lease this year for potato cultivation. The contract had stated that
both the landlord and the farmer had to equally bear the expenses of
cultivation. And, they would also
equally share the profits on selling the yield. But, the price of the potatoes
is much below than the expenses of farming. Gudu Murmu could not gather the
courage of collecting the potatoes from the field. And, he chose to drink
insecticide before doing that.
What about the
accounts of the 150 sacks in his house?
“Are these mine? These belong to the
land-owner. And only 37 sacks. They are kept in the house as we could not get
enough prices for them. If these are sold, half of the earnings are to be given
to him. This year the price of rice is on the ebb. So those could not be sold.
My father had thought that the potato cultivation could compensate for the
losses of paddy cultivation. He himself is now gone.” Ram Murmu was replying to
the shameless lies of the government.
The voices of the people do not seem
to reach the 14th floor of the Nabanna. If it would have, the government could
have easily taken initiatives to stop this endless death march. A potato farmer
had written to the chief minister on March 3 fearing imminent danger. The
letter had directly reached the resident in the 14th floor of the Nabanna.
Now the words of the letter have made
a cruel return to the soil. What were the anxieties written in the letter of a
potato farmer from Udaynarayanpur?
“… Therefore madam, I am pleading to you to
immediately take necessary actions to save us from the lurking obvious death.”
This was how Dipak Santra concluded his letter. This potato farmer who wrote
from a Goja village from Udaynarayanpur also stated that, “Taking debts, I have
cultivated potatoes in my own two bighas, and in 3½ bighas shared land. Now,
potatoes do not have a profitable price, and no one is willing to buy potatoes.
We cannot find a way out from this devastatingly frustrating crisis. The
potatoes can also not be left in the field owing to proliferation of potato
aphids. Hundreds and hundreds of farmers are in the similar predicament as me.”
Those who had pleaded to the chief
minister on March 3 would have also started to join the death march by now.
Cultivation of potatoes in a bigha had
cost approximately Rs 17,000 this year. One bigha can yield at a maximum, 80
packets of potatoes. Potatoes are being sold at Rs 100 per packet. So, the
earnings of a farmer per bigha are Rs 8000. This implies that the net loss is
Rs 9000 per bigha. “The cost of Rs 17,000 is only the cost of cultivating. If
we consider the expenses of collecting, the cost would rise even higher. Such
is the dire situation.”
The price of potatoes
is Rs 100 per packet. And, what about paddy?
Distressed potato seller Subal Bairagi
informed that the price of rice is Rs 580 per sack (of 60 kilograms). It
implies that one quintal rice costs only Rs 966! It is way below the minimum
support price. The government has fixed Rs 1360 per quintal of rice as the
minimum support price. The price in Bhatar is Rs 394 less than the MSP! The
farmers who did not get prices for their paddy throughout the winter had hit
the streets. Then also, the government did not show any initiative to curb
distress selling. When did the government start buying rice? When, the distress
selling by the farmers was over. Then, the government had opened Kishan mandis
to buy rice from the farmers. The result, the middlemen bought rice at Rs 1000
per quintal from the farmers and sold a portion of that at Rs 1375 per quintal
to the government. So, the farmers were kept at bay. This time, the government
has decided to buy only 50,000 tons of potatoes at Rs 5.30 directly from the
farmers. The farmers could not conceal their laughter at such a diktat even in
such a period of agony and distress. “We saw enough of the direct buying of
rice. Now, it’s the turn of potatoes. Go and see that they are already being
bought from some businessmen”, sarcastically commented Subal Bairagi, the
potato farmer from Bhatar.
The relatives of farmers whose family
members have committed suicides are reluctant to go to the fields. “I have no
intent of collecting the potatoes from the field. Let it remain as it is. Rs
2000 additional cost has to be incurred for the labour to collect those from
the field. Even that price would not be met up. Then even we would not be left
with any way-out, apart from drinking poison”, Ram Murmu expressed his
frustration and anguish. So, the potatoes are heaped in the fields of rural
Bengal. There is none to buy those. The farmers have lost all zeal to sell
them. The fields of Bengal are expressing a silent sarcasm to the festive mood
of the chief minister.
Last year, the chief minister was the
prime speaker in all the meetings of the Task Force. The idea of curbing potatoes to be sent to
other states was devised by her. She was the one who had regulated the price of
the potatoes in the open market. Why is she absent this time around?
Instead of lowering the price in the
open market, Mamata Banerjee had increased the price of potatoes last time. But
by banning potatoes from being sent to neighbouring states, she had created a
much larger danger. The government had defied all protests which said that such
a sanction is unconstitutional in a federal structure.
Though the government has relaxed its
sanctions under pressure, yet its after-effect is far from being over. There is
no demand of potatoes in Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Assam and Odisha.
Being alarmed by the whimsical attitude of the West Bengal government, those
state governments have provided subsidies to its farmers for fertilisers and
potato seed, and urged them to produce potatoes. Hence, there is none to buy
potatoes from the fields of farmers of Bengal, who have produced greater yield
than the last year.
Mamata Banerjee would complete her
four years of being sworn in as the chief minister in two months. In 2011,
farmers had set their jute ablaze in the field, not getting the worth of their
yield. Since then, there has been no agricultural season where the farmers have
got fair prices for their crops. Rice, jute or potato – no crop had a fair
price in the market. On the other hand, the expenses of cultivation have
increased in geometric proportions. While the central government has increased
the price of the fertilisers, the Mamata Banerjee government has increased the
price of electricity.
The fields of Bengal are now the
death-trap for the farmers. The farmers of Bengal are now in a similar state as
the cotton farmers of Vidarbha.
