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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Spreading anger by Niranjan Takle

Farmers in Maharashtra flock to a new breed of aggressive leaders

Its name in Marathi means edge of the hill, but Dongarkada has no hill or mountain in its vicinity. What the village in Maharashtra's Hingoli district has is a cooperative sugar factory controlled by Congress leader Ashok Chavan. Though the Adarsh Housing Society scam rocked the state and forced him to resign as chief minister, the village remains loyal to Chavan. 

Besides Chavan, its Zilla Parishad member is a Congressman and its legislator, Rajeev Satav, is a trusted lieutenant of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi; the panchayat is ruled by the Congress. Then, why on earth did the villagers flock in large numbers to listen to the BJP legislator Pasha Patel?

Patel, former president of the farmers' organisation Shetkari Sanghatana, has been questioning the government's method of fixing the minimum support price for crops (see box). Most farmers, in fact, are not aware of the mechanism to decide MSP. Patel led a 525km ‘kisan march' on foot from Latur in Marathwada to Nagpur in Vidarbha, breathing fire at the government.
 
He was at his critical best in Dongarkada. The crowd responded with claps, cheers and whistles. “The government's method of calculating MSP smacks of wrong intent and hence farmers never even get what they ended up spending,” said Patel. He demanded that MSP be calculated on the basis of realistic input costs.

At Waranga, the next stop of the march, firebrand farmer leaders Raju Shetty and Sadabhau Khot joined the march. Their Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana has been successfully fighting for MSP of sugarcane against the interests of cooperative sugar mills run by political heavyweights. MP from Ichalkaranji constituency, Shetty went on a hunger strike in Baramati, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar's hometown, a few months ago. More than 1.5 lakh sugarcane farmers joined him, forcing the government to concede his demands. 

Shetty did not disappoint the 3,000-strong crowd at Waranga. “If the government doesn't restructure the mechanism of calculating MSP for all crops, the consequences could be grave,” he said.

Patel said bogus fertilisers, seeds and pesticides were sold to farmers in the region, which affected crop quality as well as vitiated the soil. “The government's measures have always been superficial. The real disease is not being treated, only symptoms are,” he said. 

The mismatch between the input cost and the price of the produce is the main problem of the farmers. “We have been hearing for long that this is a market-based economy, but 64 per cent of the population is not allowed to decide the prices of their produce. It is an irony,” said Patel. 

The new wave of protest is fast gaining support among farmers. “We know these leaders. We have faith in them that they will fight for us and deliver us what we have been deprived of all these years. We will do anything they ask us to do,” said Prakash Chavan, a cotton farmer. 
 
Chavan, who has a family of five to support, has a loan of 11.25 lakh to repay. “We repay and borrow every year but can't save a penny for future. I don't want to borrow for my daughters' marriages but have no option. I would rather be a fighter for a day than live the entire life as a beggar,” he said.

There is anger all over Marathwada and Vidarbha, and the farmers respond spontaneously to Patel, Shetty and Khot. “Farmers know us and have faith in our commitment,” said Shetty. “The ruling party should agree to our legitimate demands, or else the farmers will not spare them on the roads and in elections.”

Shivaji Patil, a farmer from Latur, said farmers were frustrated that they would do anything to get their demands accepted.  

After the march reached Nagpur. Patel and other leaders submitted a memorandum to the government to restructure the state and the Central agricultural costs and prices commissions. In the Legislative Assembly, there were heated arguments over the method of calculating MSP, and Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan announced a 12,000-crore package for cotton, rice and soybean farmers. 

Though he claimed that it was the biggest package ever for the farmers of Maharashtra, many activists were not impressed. “This is a mockery of the miseries that farmers face,” said activist Kishor Tiwari. “This amount is just enough to buy poison.” 

Cotton, rice and soybean are cultivated on about 87 lakh hectares across Vidarbha, Marathwada and North Maharashtra. More than two-thirds of this land, however, is not irrigated. “Farmers depend on monsoons and can get only one crop in a year. If this one crop can't earn them food for the year, they are left with no choice but embrace death,” said Patel. 

Irrigation in Maharashtra is pathetic. Only 2.7 per cent of the cotton farms in the state are irrigated, against 49 per cent in Gujarat, 43 per cent in Madhya Pradesh and 35 per cent in Tamil Nadu. At 257kg a hectare, cotton productivity in Maharashtra is the lowest in the country.
 
Chavan said his government was addressing the problem. “We have irrigation schemes worth 175,000 crore under implementation with an annual budget provision of 17,000 crore to 18,000 crore, and it will take time to meet the needs of irrigation,” he said. He admitted that there was a need to restructure the agricultural costs and prices commissions. 

But Patel said the chief minister's hands were tied. “I think he understands the real problem and has sympathy, but he will face immense pressure from the Nationalist Congress Party if he tries to loosen the iron grip that the NCP has over the irrigation ministry,” he said. “Will someone show the political will to focus on these areas rather than western Maharashtra? Will the chief minister dare do it?”  

Vidarbha is the least irrigated region in Maharashtra. Vijay Wadettiwar, a Congress legislator from Vidarbha, said: “Every year, funds allotted for irrigation projects in Vidarbha get diverted to western Maharashtra. Projects under implementation are ineffective because of corruption.” He demanded a CBI probe into the fund diversion.

The rise of the new breed of aggressive farmer leaders in Maharashtra is the result of years of exploitation and hollow promises by the politicians. Though the state has seen many farmer protests before, they were seldom as aggressive. The frustration that earlier made the farmers kill themselves is now fuelling their fight for a change.

Fruitless labour

The agricultural costs and prices commission of Maharashtra decides the minimum support prices, or MSP, on the basis of   surveys by the four agriculture universities in the state. However, many factors are neglected while doing the survey and calculating MSP, such as the rent of the farm land, money borrowed from private moneylenders and its interest, costs of the deterioration of the soil culture and losses because of disasters.
 
“Our land is also an investment and its cost and the interest on investment should be considered as per the prevailing market rates in the area,” said Shivaji Patil, a cotton farmer from Latur. “The increasing use of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers and pesticides is affecting the fertility of the land, and a farmer has to spend a lot to maintain it through various means.”

Interestingly, the wage consideration of 182 for male labourers and 157 for females is less than the government's own minimum wage act. The Swaminathan Committee had recommended that the farmer's own labour charges taken in the calculation as at least 25 per cent more than the wages paid to hired labour. But the government has kept the farmer on a par with the hired labour.

“The people from universities never do realistic surveys and all the figures that they consider are imaginary,” said Pasha Patel, a farmer leader. For instance, the irrigation cost for the cultivation of soybean on 2.5 acres is calculated as 14.77. Also, a farmer gets crop insurance only if 50 per cent of the agricultural crop in the entire taluka is destroyed. 

The use of chemical fertilisers has considerably increased in the region. While the per hectare use of chemical fertilisers was 13kg in 1971, it was 96kg in 2000. Use of pesticides grew from 24,000 tonnes in 1971 to 76,000 tonnes in 2000. Though the prices of fertilisers and pesticides increased considerably, the MSP calculation still considers the old prices.