At Rasulpur village in the Bardhaman, countless hand-woven shacks, overflowing with paddy, dot stretches of farmland. Defying the prosperity, is the family of 45-year old Amiya Saha, a farmer, who walked up to his own paddy field in the wee hours of the new year to commit suicide by consuming pesticide. Steeped in debt, Saha had taken loans from multiple sources, including, Rs 6,000 from the nearby cooperative society for paddy and potato cultivation, but failed to sell even a fraction of the produce.
In the last four months, at least 32 farmers have committed suicide in the state due to mounting debts.
Dayal Chandra Burman, a villager in Malda, consumed pesticide on a Sunday afternoon after failing to repay Rs 30,000 he owed to a moneylender. More recently, 29-year-old Sheikh Mostafa, a share-cropper, committed suicide by consuming pesticide at Balikuria village in Howrah for a having failed to arrange Rs 1,200 to pay a tractor owner.
It is not just loan sharks like doorstep moneylenders, but financial inclusion drive of banks and cooperative societies that has burdened farmers in Bengal with multiple debt.
Kinkar Bagh, a potato farmer at Rajpur, had taken a loan of Rs 30,000 from a nearby village community and Rs 40,000 from a public sector bank last October for paddy cultivation. However, with not even half of the money realised from potato cultivation this year, Bagh is on the brink of bankruptcy.
“It is not the fear of confiscation of property by banks, but the humiliation of defaulting that is bothering me,” says Bagh.
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After almost a two-year dry spell, West Bengal has produced a record 150,000 tonnes of paddy this year, almost 15 per cent more than the previous year.
Critics are pointing fingers at the poor procurement policy of the new government that has led to the present crisis.
This year government is set to procure 20,00,000 ton of rice and paddy, with of the paddy-130,00,000 tonne, expected to be trawled by rice mills or middlemen.
In absence of funds, the pace of procurement had been slower than usual, and till the first week of January Benfed and Confed, the two state-run agencies for paddy procurement, did not lifted any stocks because they had not been allocated any cash.
“Benfed will soon start operations,” said source at the state procurement agency.
On the other hand, middlemen have little interest in buying paddy from Bengal, as better quality rice from neighbouring states of Jharkhand and Bihar have flooded the markets As a result, the price of paddy in the domestic market has crashed to as low as Rs 850-900 per quintal, against the minimum support price of Rs 1,080 per quintal. In addition, fertilizer prices have doubled over the last one year, and the cost of paddy production has shot-up as high as Rs 1000 per quintal. Thus, for every quintal of paddy, farmers are suffering a loss of at least Rs 100.
With the Bangladesh border sealed, movement of paddy and rice to Bangladesh has declined to almost zero. A bumper crop in Bangladesh has complicated the situation for Bengal's farmers.
“There is no coordination among government agencies at the village level, self help gropus and elsewhere for paddy procurement. The government has also restricted the movement of rice to Bangladesh. This has led to the present crisis,” said Suryakanta Mishra is Leader of Opposition.
What has further aggravated the problem is the new government policy to transfer support price directly into the farmers’ through account-payee cheque.
The idea was to eliminate the intervention of middlemen in lifting paddy and forcing farmers to open bank accounts.
However, now, not only farmers have to bear the cost of transportation of paddy themselves, but also are facing delays in getting payments.
While many marginal farmers don't even have a bank account for encashing cheques. those who have, cases of bounced cheques is not an aberration.
“There are no buyers even for 5 kgs of rice. Those who formulate government policies should rise come from the framing background to know the woes of farmers,” rues Anwar Hussain, a farmer Rusulpur village.
“The government is not willing to buy what it should have bought in order to keep the market prices of paddy above the procurement price. Also, the new method of procurement has resulted in unnecessary delay for farmers to get the price of produce,” says Dipankar Dasgupta, economist and former professor at the Indian Statistical Institute. Ironically, even as the government stepped up procurement efforts, there is little interest among farmers to sell the paddy. At noon, the procurement counter at the Daley Bazaar Union Cooperative Agriculture Society near Rusulpur is empty.
With government procuring just one-fourth of the produce, farmers are reluctant to break their entire lot for selling a fraction. Rice mills are running out of space, and there are no buyers for the remaining paddy.
“Farmers don't want to break the entire basket for selling one fourth of produce as there are no buyers for rest of the produce. There is no place for more paddy in rice mills,” says an official at the society.
Even as farmers are suffering losses, there is not much impact on the profitability of rice mill owners, as the losses are being compensated by profits in the by-product industry.
For potato, too, price crash has been no less compelling. With the Punjab government providing transport subsidy to its farmers for excess potato production, at least 20,00,000 tonne of potato entered West Bengal in the month of December, potato price fell below the cost of production.
Against the cost of production of 50 kg potato at Rs 180 kg, farmers were getting Rs 120, per 50 kg, or a loss of Rs 30 per kg.
“Farmers were getting negative returns at cold storages after potato from Punjab came to West Bengal,” said Patit Paban De from West Bengal Cold Storage Association. Less than a year of the new government in West Bengal, and resentment runs deep in rural Bengal. “When you are at the top, you don't see people at the bottom,” says Sheikh Abdul Mustar, a farmer at Rusulpur.
Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, recently snubbed reports of farmers suicide as cases of personal distress, but a bewildered Asim Saha, brother of Amiya Saha, who committed suicide in Rusulpur a month ago, asks, “If we are not farmers, who are we? Let the chief minister come and investigate.”