Farmers Movement Archive

Why they travelled 1,400km from Maharashtra

REWARI: The protest site at Jaisinghpur Khera on the Rajasthan-Haryana border has thousands of farmers who have travelled 1,400km from Maharashtra. Many of them have come with their families and are demanding adequate infrastructure for cultivating their crops. They say years of losses and exorbitant rates of interest charged by moneylenders have driven many of their counterparts to suicide. Farmers’ protests are not new in Maharashtra, where cultivators have been asking the government for adequate prices if their produce. Prashant Selke (57) and his family left their home in Nandurbar district on December 21. It took them four days to travel 1,042km to Jaisinghpur Khera and join the protests against the three laws. “I used to cultivate oilseeds, groundnuts and soybean. But after years of losses, I was forced to sell off my land. Now, I work as a farm labourer in the same land that I owned once. I am the sole earning member in my family of five,” he said. Among those affected by the declining purchasing power of farmers are the landless agriculture labourers. Mukesh Dhawle is one such. He said it is extremely important for the farmers to make profits. Else, farm labourers like him won’t get jobs. Dhawle earns Rs 200 as a day by working in the fields. The time he is spending at the protest site will cost him dear. He needs to work daily to suatain his family. Vijoo Kishnan, a farmers’ leader, spoke about the issue of high rates of interest charged by moneylenders. “Due to the low holding and inferior quality of land, these farmers do not get formal credit and have to depend on local moneylenders and micro-finance companies that charge exorbitant rates of interest. This drives the farmers to desperation and even suicides,” he said. He highlighted a few numbers. “More than 12,000 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra in the past five years. But the families of only half of those farmers have got government aid. The farmers cannot pay such high rates of interest. Now, if the three laws are implemented, the possibility of farmers committing suicides would go up further,” he added. Many questioned the government’s claim that they can approach the SDM office or a civil court if they do not get the right price for their produce. “We do not have the resources to take on such big corporates. After they are cheated, farmers have to choose between fighting a legal battle and running their household. They mostly choose the latter,” said Nilesh Dhanpal, a member of the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha. “For those of us already caught in an exploitative trade, the laws introduced by the Centre make it even more difficult to have any mechanism for redress,” he added.

The Times of India

2020-12-30

Gurgaon