Why farmers across India are keen to give up the fight

With the images of the protest march of Maharashtra’s farmers still fresh in the mind, I had occasion to speak to two farmers in opposite corners of the country — UP and Tamil Nadu. Their stories are a glimpse into the agrarian crisis in India. 

Ramlal, his wife, two sons, their wives and two unmarried daughters, have come from Badayun to Dadri near Bulhandshahr  because the land back home did not yield enough to provide a decent life to the family. Ramlal’s brother tends to that piece of land growing wheat while he has come towards the bigger urban centres because he had heard that vegetable farming is more profitable than growing cereals. In the periphery of cities, growing vegetables makes sense because the time it takes to reach them to the market is short as there are efficient transport systems in cities. This is important since vegetables are perishable commodities. 

Having weighed all these considerations Ramlal moved to Dadri. Here, he leased four bhighas of land (one acre) at the rate of Rs 16,000 per year. They all live in makeshift huts they have erected on the field. The children don’t go to school but work in the field. Babies lie on charpoys as flies buzz over them. 

Last month when I met him, he was growing peas and now he’s sowed bhindi and tomatoes which will be ready in a couple of weeks. I ask him, like I always do, how it’s going. Each time, the answer is the same. “Kuch nahi bachta.” It is not the rent that is crippling. It is the cost of fertilizers and pesticides and the rate at which he is able to sell at the market. Since it is not a large piece of land, he doesn’t need a tractor. All the adults in the family and even children as soon as they are able to, supply manual labour on the field-sowing, furrowing the soil, putting manure and spraying insecticide, tending to the plants as they grow and finally cutting the vegetables, taking them to the mandi each day and dealing with unsold stock. How do they transport the vegetables to the mandi? On a jugaad vehicle that they innovatively put together by attaching a motor to a cart. 

Innovation comes easy to Ramlal and his sons. They managed to transport their buffalo from Badayun through their own low cost jugaad methods and now it lies tethered to a pole outside the hut. The one big advantage that Ramlal has — without which he would not even have been able to eke out the subsistence livelihood that he does now —  is that he has water. His landlord has set up a borewell in the field which sucks up the groundwater for his vegetables.

Far, far away in the sunny south, deep inside Chidambaram district in Tamil Nadu, another farmer Ramadas, does not have the fortune of plentiful water. This village lies on the banks of the Kollidam river which is a distributary of the Cauvery. When I ask him how things are, he and Shiva, his helper say sarcastically, “It depends if they release some water. If they do, it’s a good year. If not, it’s bad.” “They” refers to Karnataka. As the Kaveri flows downstream into Tamil Nadu, because of the various dams built across the river in Karnataka, the farmers in Tamil Nadu do not get water when they need it most. The reliance on river water happens particularly in years when the monsoon is not sufficient. All said and done he makes about 15,000 rupees in profit on an average year. Ramadas has had enough. He wants to sell the land. 

“There are children to marry off. How long can we keep doing this? I am growing old. I want to just finish with this and move on,” he says. At a distance, in the neighbouring plot, daily wage agricultural labour is hard at work in the paddy fields, a white cloth tied tightly around their heads. It is March and the sun is warm enough for us city folk to bring out our sun glasses and cap.  In a couple of months it will be blazing hot but the work cannot stop.

Ramadas points to another field where the farmer has put a borewell. Why doesn’t he do the same, I ask. “It takes three lacs to install a borewell,” he says implying that he cannot afford it. 

Erratic water supply, high cost of inputs and back breaking labour with no sign of respite from the vicious cycle. This is the story of the small farmers. The only ones who thrive on practicing agriculture in India today are rich farmers with acres of land who used mechanised means of farming and can appropriate a scarce and essential resource like water.

It is no wonder that all farmland around Delhi-NCR has gone and been taken over by builders. It is no wonder that Maharashtra’s marching farmers had poverty writ on their dignified faces. Unfortunately, even if there is a silver lining, it is hidden deep under the clouds.

The writer is the author of the book Urban Villager: Life in an Indian satellite town. Views are personal