Manohar Kalaskar
of Vegaon, Yavatmal district, hacks at a tall tree with glossy leaves
the size of plates. The bark bleeds onto the thin edge of the axe as
leaves pour to the ground. A hillock forms at his feet, and looking
up, he sees blue between green. He gathers his catch in an embrace of
twine, and places it behind his bicycle, which he pedals slowly. Nobody
awaits his arrival, and there is but one stop. This evening, Kalaskar,
45, will celebrate the farmer’s festival of Pola. He will gently
massage his two buffaloes with a paste of ghee and turmeric, and perform
an aarti to honour them. He will garland their necks with flowers, and
for an entire day allow them to rest in the freshly plucked leaves.
He will celebrate his buffaloes and thereby his lands and profession.
He will not ask why these lands led his elder brother Babanrao to swallow
pesticide, and his nephew Sanjay to break his neck. This is Vidarbha
in eastern Maharashtra. Farmers die. Sometimes one a day, sometimes
12.
There was a time
in Vidarbha when if a man owned property and grew his own food, he was
the master of his soul. But today, owning land equals impoverishment
and enslavement. And when a man you were married to or fathered by kills
himself over debt, and if that debt becomes yours, and you too are unable
to repay it, you must ask yourself, “What can I do but that which
those before me did?”
Since the first
reported suicide by a debt-ridden farmer in 1997, suicides among the
3.2 million farmers of Maharashtra’s seven cotton-producing districts
have been mutating the fabric of the traditional society in which farmers
have lived and prospered for centuries. From January 1, 2001 to August
19, 2006, according to the Maharashtra government, 1,920 farmers, many
between 20 and 45, have killed themselves. The situation is reminiscent
of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. According to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan
Samiti, in the past three months one farmer has died every eight hours.
The overwhelming
cause of death is debt, sometimes less than Rs 10,000. A farmer like
Kalaskar requires an investment of Rs 5,000 per acre of land he owns,
per year. He has no savings, and takes a bank loan. However, one attack
of the fungal infection Lal Rog, which swept Vidarbha last year tinting
the landscape a shade of blood, or floods of the magnitude which devastated
nine lakh acres in areas like Yavatmal this June, will destroy his crops.
The cotton that survives sells at Rs 1,700 per quintal, a crash from
Rs 2,500 in the early nineties, and won’t even cover his production
costs, which have trebled in the past decade. While repayment of his
debt is impossible, he still requires money to feed his family, and
prepare for the next sowing season. Blacklisted by the bank, or offered
only a portion of his requirement, he must turn with leaden feet towards
a private moneylender. Whoever this may be, he will possesses the ability
to wring personal advantage from desperation — a first right on
produce; a land sale deed, which may not be returned even after a debt
is repaid.
A farmer who has
no land or who cannot support his land will kill himself. The land is
who he is, it is his soul.
