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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A farm crisis is slowly brewing in Assam - and farmers are staging protests to draw attention to it -Arunabh Saikia

A farm crisis is slowly brewing in Assam - and farmers are staging protests to draw attention to it -Arunabh Saikia

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published Published on Jun 23, 2017   modified Modified on Jun 23, 2017
-Scroll.in

Farmers complain they do not have any support from the state in terms of irrigation or price guarantees for their cash crops.

On the morning of June 17, there was an uproar outside the office of Thaneswar Malakar, the deputy commissioner of Assam’s Barpeta district. Some 50-odd rice farmers, under the banner of the farmers’ organisation Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, shouted slogans and demanded to meet Malakar.

The farmers were agitated because their summer harvest had yielded large amounts of seedless blighted rice – the paddy stalks had husks, but no grain inside. The farmers claimed that the poor-quality harvest was a result of spurious seeds. The farmers said that the seed sellers should be arrested and the farmers compensated.

Saturday’s protest was not the first that Barpeta has witnessed in the last few weeks. In fact, it was hardly a patch on the one held in the first week of June, where locals claimed, almost 1,000 farmers had turned up.

“This year, the rice crop across the district has been damaged,” explained Hussain Mohammad Shah Jahan of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti. “People invested significant amounts on high-yielding variety of seeds, and lost all of it.” He said almost the entire batch had stalks with empty husks.

Sona Miyan, an affected rice farmer, said that he had lost more than Rs 50,000 in this crop. “I took two bighas [approximately a quarter of a hectare] on lease for Rs 10,000 to cultivate paddy,” he said. “Add to that an investment of Rs 22,000 per bigha. But my entire batch was spoilt. I don’t know what to do now.”

Barpeta is replete with such stories. Noor Salam, a sexagenarian farmer, recounted a similar story. “I had borrowed money to buy seeds and cultivate my land,” he said. “Now all of it is gone.”

Another farmer, Mangal Khan, said the yield in his field was less than half of what he got during previous harvests. “At least I got something,” he said half-jokingly.

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Scroll.in, 22 June, 2017, https://scroll.in/article/841226/a-farm-crisis-is-slowly-brewing-in-assam-and-farmers-are-staging-protests-to-draw-attention-to-it


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