Voting fields of Telangana

As electioneering peaked in poll-bound Telangana, at China Kandukur in Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri district, 60-year-old Lakshmamma sat grim-faced on the mud bund of her one-acre holding, where she had cultivated cotton during the July-October kharif cropping season.

“The worm (pink bollworm) has eaten it all. I just got two quintals,” she says. A good season would have fetched her 10-12 quintals of cotton.

Leading me into the field, she picked up a discoloured cotton boll and broke it open to reveal the severity of the pest attack.

Last year, around this time, Lakshmamma’s neighbour had killed himself over losses incurred on his six-acre cotton farm. His three sons gave over the farm to tenants, rather than persist with unviable cultivation.

In a state largely dependent on rainfed agriculture, and where about 84 per cent of its 60 lakh farmers own less than five acres each, and about 48 per cent own less than 2.5 acres, it is the vote of the small farmer such as Lakshmamma that would prove crucial in the just-concluded Assembly elections.

Little wonder then that the hot topic of discussion in these villages was the loan waiver schemes announced by the state’s main political parties — the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, and the Mahakutami , or grand alliance, of Telugu Desam and Congress.

Revenues generated by the capital Hyderabad might power the bulk of the state’s economy, but more than 55 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture.

The third consecutive year of drought, impacting 350 of the 585 mandals (revenue units), has taken its toll in the form of scores of unnatural deaths reported among farmers.

There are no official figures to indicate how many of these unnatural deaths were suicides, but there have been about 4,000 farmer suicides since the state’s formation in 2014.

Clearly, this primary sector is under severe stress. In fact, the octogenarian farmer leader S Malla Reddy, vice-president of the farmer rights group All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), says the state is in a deep agrarian crisis. “The outstanding crop loans stood at ₹37,000 crore,” he says. “Farmers are not getting respectable returns... they are making losses in most cases,” he adds.

TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao knows this well. Though his government never acknowledged the prevalence of farmer suicides, it introduced the Rythu Bandhu Bima scheme on August 15, promising farmers aged 18 to 60 a life insurance cover of ₹5 lakh each.

Ironically, the state reported 4,250 farmer deaths within 100 days of launching the scheme. The implementation agency LIC was paid ₹960 crore as premium, and about 3,900 claims have been settled so far. The manifestos of the TRS and the Mahakutami constituents were full of pro-farmer promises.

While the TRS announced (a repeat of) a farm loan waiver up to ₹1 lakh, the Congress promised a waiver of up to ₹2 lakh at one go. Having so far spent ₹16,000 crore in tranches to clear farmers’ loans, the TRS dubs its rival’s promise as misleading and unviable.

Pradesh Congress Committee president Uttam Kumar Reddy was ready with his defence. “The size of the state’s budget in 2019-20 would cross the ₹2-lakh-crore mark. We can easily set apart the money required (for the loan waiver). It’s doable,” he argues.

The promise did seem to strike a chord with voters. “They (Congress) are saying they will waive loans up to ₹2 lakh, and also our loans in women self-help groups (SHGs) up to ₹50,000,” says 40-year-old Mangamma, who owns two acres.

This still leaves out another crucial segment — tenant farmers. Ravi Kanneganti of Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), an organisation mobilising public support for agrarian issues, says tenant farmers constitute one-fourth of the state’s agricultural workforce and are the worst-hit.

“They have to earn ₹5,000-10,000 more than their land-owning peers, to pay the rent on the land. But they are left out of the Rythu Bandhu scheme,” says Kanneganti.

Despite criticism from several quarters, the TRS refused to include tenant farmers in the scheme, and the issue did not figure in its poll manifesto either. “The government is willing to pay Rythu Bandhu benefits to even non-resident Indians who own land here, but not tenant farmers,” says Kiran Kumar Vissa, convener of RSV. The Congress, smelling an opportunity, promised to extend the benefit to tenant farmers.

Malla Reddy regrets the absence of any real efforts to stem the agrarian crisis. “What it [the government] is trying to do is provide quick-fixes. The sector needs a dynamic pricing model for agricultural produce to factor in rising input costs. The farmers should know what price they would get at the time of sowing itself,” he says.

The state’s farmers feel the absence of a pan-Telangana organisation to amplify their voice and demands. About 200 of them took part in the November 30 farmers’ rally in Delhi, marching alongside their peers from across the country towards Parliament to highlight the challenges they face.

But perhaps the greatest noise they could muster was at the ballot box on December 7. How that will echo for the political class will be known soon on results day, December 11.

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