Society - MAHAMAG Magazine beyond boundaries

Horrific Spectacle of Indian Peasants

Cows feed dumped onions in Nashik, Maharashtra. The spectacle is horrible but encapsulated in it is the abysmal plight and distress of the Indian peasants. A glut in the production but non-availability of remunerative price have been prompting the farmers to take extreme steps of either discarding or burning their crop. A series of harrowing tales of wanton deprivation of the peasants have come to the fore of late. Shreyas Abhale, a farmer from Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, was reportedly left with just Rs.6/- after selling 2,657kg onions at just over Re.1/-a kilogram. This was after deducting his labour and transport expenses. Angered over his meagre earning, the farmer sent the paltry amount to the BJP chief minister of the state. Sanjay Sathe, a resident of Niphad tehsil in Nashik district offered only Rs.1/- per kg at the local wholesale market. After aprolonged negotiation, he could sell 750kgs of

his produce at Rs.1.40 per kg. As a mark of protest, Sathe donated the entire amount of money to the Disaster Relief Fund of the PMO.

Rajendra Bawake, a resident of Sakuri village in Ahmednagar district , had claimed that even after investing Rs.2/- lakh and energy into cultivating brinjal, he could only manage to receive Rs.65,000/- as price at the rate of 20 paise per kg. The distraught and irate farmer, who was upset with the outcome, uprooted all brinjal plants.

In Madhyapradesh’s Neemuch mandi,Onions were sold for as low as 50 paise per kg which put local farmers in a state of frenzy. Mewalal Patidar, a farmer, reportedly said, “I would like to throw the yield on the road instead of selling it for peanuts.” “The ideal price of tur dal would be Rs.7,000/- a quintal as that is the approximate cost of cultivating a quintal. Said Sunil Jadhav, who owns five acres (two hectares) in the Amravati belt of Vidarbha. “But the traders are

offering a little over Rs.3,000/- a quintal though we were assured of a price at least four times our expenses. Now I am at the mercy of traders.”

Onion farmers in Karnataka’s Belagavi district also staged a similar protest a fortnight ago and even locked the main gate of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee(APMC), following the sudden decline in prices.

Sugarcane farmers in different parts of Karnataka protested demanding minimum support price for cane produce and payment of arrears by factories. Enraged on being forced into distress sale at an unbelievable low price, sugarcane farmers of Uttar Pradesh burnt their crops a year back. But instead of taking any effective step to ameliorate their woes, the state’s minister suggested them to start growing crops other than sugarcane to “help contain diabetes” in the state.

Just a few days back, residents of Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, woke up to a bizarre sight. Potatoes lay strewn on some of the prominent roads and crossings, including the Vidhan Sabha Marg. The angry potato farmers in UP, which produces about 30% of India’s potatoes, abandoned their crops on the streets.

Almost similarly, the potato farmers of West Bengal were also throwing away the produce on the highways . The procurement price they were offered varied betweenRs.1.3 to Rs.2/- only. In Punjab too, potato farmers are facing huge losses as they are getting a price of Re.1/- per kg. instead of their expectation of Rs.5-6/-

While the series of incidents from different parts of the country narrated above show how the peasants who cultivate crops with toil by incurring a substantial expenditure towards buying agricultural inputs like seeds,

fertilizers and pesticides as well as other ancillary requirement find the procurement mechanism so manipulative and malfunctioning that they are forced to sell their produce at a throwaway price which often is equivalent to receiving virtually no price at well.

But when the crops reach the retail market via procurement set up, storage arrangement and wholesalers, the end price at which those are sold to common people multiply several hundred times meaning the middle men make it all. So, while the peasants are getting ranging from 50 paise to Re.1/- per kg for the onion produced by them, the same one is sold in the retail outlets at a price of Rs.15/- to Rs.20/- per kg.

This stark reality unfolds the inherent anomaly and dire straight of Indian agriculture. India is producing enough food to feed its people now and in the foreseeable future. But those who have been producing these food grains and vegetables are subjected to appalling misery and penury by the obtaining capitalist system which is also forcing the consumers to pay through their nose for buying those from the market.

The distribution system gripped by a series of middlemen, hoarders, black marketers, middlemen and price manipulators which are causing all these aberrations and bringing wails and woes to both producers and the consumers. The monopolistic control of this vicious circle over agricultural markets is perpetuated by law. So, the peasants have no scope for selling directly to consumers. They are compelled to offload their produce to these utterly corrupt and all-powerful middle agencies and middlemen. (proletarian era)