O J’s Corner

Farmers urged to cultivate,
without providing for
crop losses


Urging farmers to undertake paddy cultivation intensively, without providing for crop loss security, is just like driving them to suicide. We have found that agricultural production has been sliding down. Therefore, the government and the state agencies have been coaxing and cajoling farmers to sowing and planting. The farmers genuinely believed they would reap rich dividends. Their hopes were not unfounded, for the paddy plants were flushed with grain. That is the story of Kuttanad and elsewhere in Kerala. But then the unseemly summer showers poured out. There were floods all around. The standing crops were inundated. The farmers have been clamouring for introducing harvesting machines for reaping the ripe paddy. The CPM workers union would not allow them to bring in harvesting machines. They claimed if the machines were allowed in, they would lose their work. They would not reap and they would not allow machines to take over. The whole crop was lost.

Now the clamour for compensation rose to the crescendo. The State government is telling the farmers that the paddy harvested would be procured by the government at Rs 10 per kilogramme. Everyone is offering the moon. But the farmers are at their wit’s end, for they do not know how they would be able to launch agricultural operations during the next season.

The State government is putting the onus on the Central government to pay full compensation. The clamour is for additional allotment under the Calamity Contingency Relief Fund. The Central government has devised certain norms for payment under this head. Also when the State government is yet to finish off the amounts in the head, the Union Government cannot sanction additional funds. Central teams come and go. They make recommendations. But no government can provide more when there is balance in the budgeted provision.

The process appears to be a vicious circle. The farmers’ lot is not that salubrious.