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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Calls for farm loan waiver in Haryana as potato prices crash, farmer debt surges -Sayantan Bera

Calls for farm loan waiver in Haryana as potato prices crash, farmer debt surges -Sayantan Bera

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published Published on Jun 15, 2017   modified Modified on Jun 15, 2017
-Livemint.com

Farm loan waivers have been announced in Maharashtra and promised by PM Narendra Modi in Uttar Pradesh, then why should Haryana, another BJP state, be left behind, questions a farmer

Kurukshetra/ New Delhi:
Next to a sprawling mango orchard, a four-hour drive from the capital, birds peck on worms emerging from rotting potatoes heaped by the wayside. The shade of giant mango trees offers relief from the heat of this hot summer day, but the stench is unbearable.

It is here at Mangoli, in Haryana's Kurukshetra district, that four dejected farmers abandoned over half-a-tonne of potatoes a week ago, unable to find buyers who would pay them a decent price. Some of the tuber has melted into a muddy slush, while the rest decay under stacks of hay.

Sukhpal Singh takes out a sales receipt: The 43 quintals of potatoes he sold at a local mandi (wholesale market) on 25 May got him Rs900, it shows. After paying labour charges and agents’ fees, he was left with Rs380—meaning the potatoes fetched him a paltry 9 paisa per kilo, against at least Rs3 required to grow one kilo. Singh left the rest of his harvest near the Mangoli orchard, never to return to the mandi.

 At the Shahabad mandi some 10km away, another farmer found a more novel use for his unsold harvest. Every morning, Jasbir Singh stations a mini-truck loaded with potatoes at the mandi. On Monday, a political party used it as a prop during its protests, demanding a loan waiver and better crop prices. (Last week, it was a local farmers' union, of which Jasbir Singh is a member, that dumped the potatoes on the road.) Towards the evening, poor women labourers at the mandi forage the heap to take home the tubers for free—a contrast to images from Maharashtra where farmers making a similar set of demands— remunerative prices and a loan forgiveness—spilt milk and threw vegetables on the road earlier this month.

Jasbir Singh, who owns 40 acres in Haryana—the cradle of India’s green revolution, known for its agricultural prosperity—says he lost over Rs10 lakh this potato season. Over the past few years, his debt has grown to Rs58 lakh.

On Monday, a crowd of farmers gathered around Gurnam Singh, a state-level leader of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, a farmers' association. A week ago, they had dumped their produce on the street, to press their demand that the state government purchase all of their sunflower seeds at state-set prices. Today, even as they discuss their next course of action, they point fingers at an array of problems.

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Livemint.com, 15 June, 2017, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/fVq6aHRaQ4NeThdKFZWiZI/Calls-for-farm-loan-waiver-in-Haryana-as-potato-prices-crash.html


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