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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | As if drought weren't bad enough -Marx Tejaswi

As if drought weren't bad enough -Marx Tejaswi

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published Published on Dec 20, 2016   modified Modified on Dec 20, 2016
-The New Indian Express

BALLARI: Demonetisation couldn't have come at a worse time for farmers in Ballari district. November is when they harvest the kharif crop and sow for rabi. Even as they were coming to terms with the carryover effects of drought and low prices, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled a fast one on them.

Lepakshi Naidu, a farmer of Hosapete taluk, says demonetization left him with no cash to buy pesticide for the chilli crop he had sown. He got by by borrowing from someone he knew. His own money is in the bank but it allows him to withdraw only Rs 2,000 per day, He can’t pay his workers and for the other inputs.

It’s a familiar story in Ballari, the granary of Karnataka, irrigated by the Tungabhadra.

So what about rabi then? Naidu said water has not been released from the Tungabhadra dam anyway, so he had not bothered to sow a postrainy season crop. “My worry is now the chilli crop. I sowed 30 acres, and I hope it survives. I need pesticides urgently but I have no cash,” Naidu said.

Years of drought have rendered the farmers of Ballari a stoic lot. So the anger does not burst forth from the likes of Lepakshi Naidu but it takes a lot of smothering of temper to accept the possible loss of 30 acres of chilli for the lack of a few thousand rupees.

The pesticide shops in Ballari is a good place to sense the the distress of farmers.  The owner of one,  Chandrashekhar, told New Indian Express that rabi sowing had indeed dwindled due to the water shortage but the cash crunch made it worse. But what has kept farm operations going despite these twin blights has been the age-old informal coping systems policymakers make light of. Chandrasekhar sells  his pesticide bottles on credit. “But for how many farmers will I be able to do so?” he asked.

The pesticide bottle evokes a particularly morbid image in southern India’s farmscape, drinking monocrotophos mixed with Coca Cola being a preferred method of committing suicide by farmers.

Please click here to read more.
 

The New Indian Express, 18 December, 2016, http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2016/dec/18/as-if-drought-werent-bad-enough-1550342--1.html


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