The Hindu Business Line : Nature's caprices and state's tyranny

A few years back a co-worker in farmers' movement — a double graduate and a practising farmer in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra — had developed a fine orchard and a grape garden after years of hard work. Locating water with the help of traditional water diviners as well as more modern gadget-wielders he came out lucky and struck an underground stream of abundant water.

Greatly encouraged he borrowed money from banks and friends and worked hard along with his equally educated wife for years. And finally they succeeded in developing a good orchard of various fruits and a really promising grape garden.

Came the day of result, he marshalled a sizeable squad of skilled workers, baskets, cutter-scissors and was all ready to have the first abundant harvest when all of a sudden storm clouds gathered from no where and it started raining and hailing.

Within a matter of few minutes, the whole grape garden and the fine orchard lay devastated — each bunch of the 'Thomson Seedless' grape damaged and every fruit bruised. Surprisingly, there was hardly any rain or hailstorm in the region around.

My friend's orchards looked as if it was selectively targeted by the capricious Nature. My friend has left his village and orchards not caring to collect a compensation of some Rs 500 per acre offered by the State government and moved to a city. He runs a small service centre there and is doing extremely well, now. That was one individual experience. This can happen to whole regions and communities. This is happening right now in the northern parts of the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

This has been a particularly bountiful year for the farmers in Vidarbha. While the rest of the Maharashtra suffered from a severe drought, Vidarbha had good rains, and, more important, timely precipitation. The cotton crop was bountiful and the farmers have succeeded after 17 years of long struggle in freezing the infamous Maharashtra Cotton Monopoly Procurement Scheme.

Private traders are offering prices as high as Rs 2,900 per quintal against the measly Rs 2,300 offered by the Cotton Federation, all in one single instalment without any deduction towards loan repayments. The Federation's procurement centres stand deserted. For once, cotton-farmer of Vidarbha is in a position to hold his head high.

Bank authorities are organising massive loan recovery operations. There are instances of their breaking open the houses of farmers and sequestered the cotton stores in anticipation of a further improvement in the prices.

There are also instances of farmers collectively reacting and forcingthe bank employees to put back the sequestered cotton on their own back-loads. There have also been instances when few farmers incapable of resistance have consumed insecticides to end their lives in desperation.

The soybean farmers in Vidarbha have been happy too. The crop has been abundant and the prices are ruling high. The farmers are repaying the old debts on a large scale. The cotton gins and solvent extraction plants are looking up after decades of recession and bankruptcies.

And then it suddenly started happening on the Republic Day — unseasonal rains and heavy hailstorm. It started in Chandrapur district. Over 30 villages were particularly badly hit. Scores of people were injured and most fields left in total ruins. Then the rain-monster turned to Amaravati and Wardha districts.

Farmers were harvesting chickpea, tur and chillies. The harvests were stacked in fields when disaster struck. A whole harvest lay totally ruined in a matter of hours.

Politicians talk loosely of compensation and glibly of comprehensive crop insurance. What kind of an insurance can protect farmers against the caprices of nature in a country where the agriculture is capital-starved and there are no physical protection like poly-houses and culturing of whole soils to provide perfect drainage? With no umbrella to protect crops and no insurance to cover risks and no government to give compensation, what can the farmers do except turn their hands towards the sky to pray and hope that they be spare a recurrence of the ghastly disaster — through drought, rains, hailstorm or pests?

One disaster of this type is enough to make generations of farmers overlarge adjoining tracks fearful of the caprices of nature and followers of awhole bevy of holy-men so abundant in India's countryside.

(The author is Founder, Shetkari Sanghatana, and can be contacted at sharad@mah.nic.in)

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