Sonia Faleiro

The government hasn’t reached Vidarbha’s farmlands, but its poison has. Sonia Faleiro ventures into the hinterlaland to discover cataclysmic tales of deprivation and despair wreaked by Bt Cotton cultivation

Bunty Bhoyar’s screams singe the hot, dry air of Kosara village in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district. The five-year-old in his torn shorts and T-shirt, mucus smeared across his face, body dusty from playing in the mud, cries himself into exhaustion as he awaits comfort his family can no longer offer him. His mother Lata, 25, is picking cotton; his brother Shubham, seven, is enjoying what may be his last days in primary school; his grandmother Gangubai, who cooks and cleans for the family, sits in the kitchen, stirring gruel for her grandson with a weary hand. On October 19, 2005, Bunty’s father, Lokeshwar Keshavrao Bhoyar, 30, committed suicide, jumping into the well, which for years, sullenly refused to provide water for his fields.

While Bhoyar may have jumped his debt to moneylenders, literally, his family is not as fortunate. Lata, an illiterate housewife, is now a daily wage labourer. She works ten-to-five, earning Rs 2 for every kilo cotton she picks. On a good day, she earns about Rs 120. When her husband died, she borrowed Rs 5,000 from the neighbours for his funeral. She is still unclear about how much he owes, but since his death, she also owes three months’ payment on the electricity (Rs 500), and annual land revenue tax (Rs 200). At night, exhausted and often hungry, she has a recurring nightmare: of moneylenders standing over her, mouths wide, hands outstretched. Their demands reach a crescendo, until the image is a blur, but for a distant well, its emptiness echoing with her husband’s screams.

For seven years in Maharashtra’s eastern Vidarbha region, which comprises 11 districts of which six produce cotton, farmers like Bhoyar have been committing suicide by hanging or drowning themselves, or consuming pesticides like Endosulfan. In these villages, the cries of a new widow are as commonplace as birdsong. From June 2 till November 25, 2005, there have been 136 suicides in Vidarbha. Yavatmal leads with 51, followed by Amravati, 30, Akola, 16 and Awashim, 10. “Pesticide is available in the remotest corner of Vidarbha,” says Nagpur-based journalist Jaideep Hardikar. “But if you want folic acid, you have to walk 50 km. The government hasn’t reached the people, but the poison has.”

The reasons for this despair are multiple, and have escalated over the years. One diseased crop or the misguided purchase of spurious seeds, for example, necessitates a loan. Only five percent of farmers are eligible for loans from cooperatives and banks, usually because of a previous default. The remainder are forced into the grip of private, often hostile moneylenders who extract approximately Rs 500 interest every four months on every Rs 1,000 borrowed. Once this loan is defaulted on — invariably the case in irrigation-starved Vidarbha — the farmer’s desperation for the sale of his cotton and soya bean increases. A fact the government isn’t unaware of. Yet, last year, the government paid the farmers in three instalments over a year from its date of purchase. This year, it’s not only paying less than the market price, it is deducting last year’s loans from the sale price.

While soya bean is harvested and sold in one lot in October-November, cotton pickings occur in several lots from October to February. Unless payment is made immediately, the farmer is unable to pay even the Rs 25 a day to daily wage labourers to help him harvest his crop. “In a normal cycle, the farmer picks his first lot, sells it, and uses the money to pay the previous year’s debt and fund the pickings that follow,” explains Shreenivas V. Khandewale, director, RS Ruikar Institute of Labour and Socio-Cultural Studies, Nagpur. “If the government takes all the cotton and doesn’t pay up to next June, what will the farmer do?”

This year has been the worst for Vidarbha’s farmers since the first farmer’s suicide seven years ago. In 2004, up to 80 percent of cotton growers harvested BT, genetically modified seeds produced by a company called Monsanto. Recalls Hardikar, “When actor Nana Patekar, the brand ambassador of Monsanto, toured this region last year to promote BT, his public meetings had a huge impact. Farmers went for BT in a big way. But it boomeranged badly.”

The seeds, with a starting price of Rs 1,600 (the hybrid variety cost Rs 450 a packet), have demonstrated no sustainability in the parched environment of Vidarbha. This year, the fungal infection Lal Rog struck the fields. Stretches of land in Yavatmal appear a hazy crimson in the distance. From close quarters, the withered cotton, branches red in colour, make for an eerie sight. In the shadow of each failed harvest, stands an entire family, emaciated and hungry. “Monsanto’s claim that a test application would involve minimum pesticides and maximum yield has proved fatal,” says Kishore Tiwari, president, Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti.

The government’s role in this gruesome charade is glaring. From November 12, it began a crackdown on unlicenced moneylenders, arresting 150 in a week. This has only increased the pressure on farmers faced with a failed crop. Says Tiwari, “After 2000, moneylenders became traders, loaning seeds and fertilisers. In return, they would take the crop at a downgraded price. So the farmers faced huge losses. But without them, the farmers have no recourse. The government won’t give them money, but it gives vehicle loans even to defaulting farmers, because it has a tie-up with the companies.”

The per quintal price of cotton has also been reduced by the government by Rs 500, and on an average, a farmer whose cotton subscribes to the standard of less that eight percent moisture, receives between Rs 1,700 — Rs 1,980 per quintal. Further, according to a Water Regulatory Bill passed by the Maharashtra Assembly this year, farmers must pay Rs 580 per acre for water every month.

A farmer, with up to 15 acres of land, earns approximately Rs 10,000 for a year’s toil. With this amount, he must feed his family, pay for his children’s education, save for their wedding, and purchase the increasingly expensive inputs for his land. An import duty of only 10 percent has led to the flooding of the Indian market with imported cotton. Combined with decreased subsidies and spiralling prices of inputs, it appears that the government is turning the screw. “Families are starving, committing suicide,” says Tiwari. “But not one family has been rehabilitated. It is a blot on our so-called progressive society.”

Sushila Tulsiram Aswale is 35; but as she stares at her hands slowly sifting grain in a small steel bowl, she could be mistaken for the grandmother of Mangesh, 19, and Vinod, 15. On September 9, Aswale’s husband, Tulsiram Maruti, 45, uncorked a bottle of pesticide, and poured a quarter capful of the expensive poison down his throat. After her husband’s suicide, Vinod continued his schooling. But Mangesh, who had left his education earlier to become a daily wage labourer, earning Rs 45 a day, was forced to harvest the five acres of the family land as his first step towards repaying a bitter inheritance of Rs 90,000 in debt.

When five bags of seeds produced four quintal of cotton after a year’s work, Mangesh began to feel as cornered as his father had in the days leading to his suicide. “I don’t even know about my father’s debts. I was never interested in farming. And now, I have the tension of feeding my family.” Although Mangesh has picked the cotton, he is yet to sell it.

Like him, an increasing number of farmers are hopeful that the government will augment its rates and are hence biding their time. If he doesn’t wait, and sells for the current rate of Rs 1,900 per quintal, Mangesh will receive Rs 7,600 to feed his family and maintain his land for the next 12 months. Living on debt so far, the family requires between Rs 2,500 — 3,000 a month to feed itself. “What will we eat?” Mangesh asks, in despair.

The long-term effect of this institutional impoverishment is reflected in the physical deterioration of families like the Aswales and Bhoyars. Since they earn less, they eat less. In every family, the adults take turns to fast, one day each week, to stretch their limited supplies. As habitual debtors, they live in fear of their land being seized by moneylenders. It isn’t unusual for a small plot of land being cultivated by four brothers on an annual rotation. Children abandon their education, and with it the chance of a better life. Sons follow in their father’s ill-fated footsteps. Daughters tend the house, worried into sickness that their dowry, which must be no less than Rs 1 lakh, and the cost of their wedding, at Rs 60,000 upwards, is escalating their parents’ trauma.

“There are families whose girls are unmarried at 24,” says Hardikar, “when in these villages, the maximum age for marriage is 20, maybe 22. Now they’ll remain unmarried.”

On November 4, 19-year-old Neeta Pundalikrao Bhopat, who was studying for her BA, committed suicide. In her suicide note, she wrote, “My family can’t make even a thousand rupees a month. And I have two younger sisters. My parents can’t bear the burden of our marriages when we don’t have enough to eat. So, I am ending my life. Nobody should be blamed for it.”

Women, without doubt, are among the worst affected. Since her husband Sanjay Yadav Jeddevar, 28, committed suicide on November 11, Jyoti is looking after her 11-month-old daughter and one-and-a-half-year-old son with the help of her mother-in-law Sumanbai, 60. The two women are working to repay three loans of over Rs 1 lakh that Sanjay had borrowed from a moneylender, a women’s society and a state bank. After her husband commits suicide, if the children are young, the widow, who may even be illiterate, becomes the sole wage earner, and is responsible for the repayment of all debts.

Since the entire farming community is in a similar cycle of poverty and debt, the widow receives no help from relatives or villagers. “If her family helps her out with food, they will go hungry. Everyone has bought BT this year, and his or her crops have Lal Rog. They may help later in getting the children married by searching for prospective partners, but they won’t give money,” says Vilas Bhongade, a farmer’s activist partnering NGO CRY, in Vidarbha.

In Kosara village itself, an estimated 100 of 1,500 people are living on loan. With two suicides in the last month, farmer Vijayanand Namdev Gowri has this explanation to offer as to why some give up: “Some farmers know there’s no hope, while others keep hoping. But the debts keep increasing, and soon we will all have to make this decision.” Santosh Shamraoji Martawar, 28, of Sutra village became the head of the family after his father drowned himself on September 9. His body was found two days later. Two failed harvests, and harassment from moneylenders, to whom he owned approximately Rs 30,000, prompted his decision. Martawar says, “I would tell him repeatedly that it wasn’t a lot of money, and that we would repay it. But he hated being in debt. For him, Rs 30,000 was too much money.”

Government compensation regulations haven’t been implemented to the advantage of the farmer either. A family has to fulfil 42 conditions, ranging from possession of a Below Poverty Line ration card to the loan having been taken from a bank or cooperative, to qualify for the Rs 1 lakh compensation given for a suicide attributed to crop failure. As a result, until November 2005, only 168 families had received compensation. Each receives Rs 30,000 in cash, while Rs 70,000 is placed in a fixed deposit. In a community without a tradition of remarriage, a widow is therefore sentenced to a lifetime of working the fields. According to activist Prajwale Tatte, “Women tell me that each evening, they stand at the door terrified that their husband may not return.” On November 1, seven years after her husband committed suicide, Meerabai Hatti Chavan of Ambezari village, Yavatmal, swallowed pesticide. Her four children must now take on the burden that their parents couldn’t.

Bharti Kishore Gowri, 30, has three daughters; Poonam, 10; Manisha, seven, and Sonu, two. Her husband Kishore Namdev Gowri consumed pesticide, three days before Diwali. The family had had no plans to celebrate the festival. Like everyone else in Kosara village, the Gowris had debts and a poor harvest — their 4.5 acres had yielded no cotton, and only one quintal of soya beans. “Karz, karz, karz,” says Gowri, were the only words her husband muttered, with increasing helplessness, in the days before he died. On October 29, a few hours after Bharti had left to work on the fields, Kishore bought pesticide from the village shop and while walking down the road to his hut, swallowed some. Gowri’s elder daughters are in school; she works in the fields earning Rs 30 daily, while her mother-in-law tends to the youngest daughter. “I’ll educate my children for as long as possible,” says Bharti. “I have over Rs 50,000 in debt, and one day I’ll have to marry off my girls. But I can’t think about these things now.”

As villages resound with cries of desperation and grief, a family in Yavatmal’s Telang Takari village has no tears left to shed. In 1997, when Ramdas Ambarwar consumed pesticide, he became the first farmer in Vidarbha to commit suicide over an inability to repay his debts. Ambarwar left behind his wife, mother, and four daughters. Perhaps because Ambarwar was the first victim of what would spiral into a phenomenon, and the Sarpanch of the village as well as a graduate, Chief Minister Narayan Rane visited his family and promised immediate compensation.

In 1998, as a result of Ambarwar’s suicide, a government resolution was passed assuring the waiver of bank loans, free education for daughters, compensation of Rs 1 lakh, and free agricultural inputs for three years to similarly bereaved families. The resolution, scoffs Tiwari, was never implemented.

Ambarwar’s wife Saraswati tends the 12 acres of fields, while her mother-in-law stays home with the children. Her debts have slowly accrued. She borrowed money first to marry off her eldest daughter Sushma, 22, then to pay for medicines for her second child Jaishree, who died at 18. While Manjusha, 15, still remains to be married, there are also piling medical bills for the treatment of a yet unidentifiable ailment that Meenakshi, 19, suffers from.

As they slowly walk in the same circle of crop failure and debt that their father felt strangulated by, the girls’ misery is tinged with an unwelcome déjà vu. “His death didn’t make matters better for anyone, only worse,” says Manjusha. “The Rs 1 lakh was spent repaying old debts. And now my mother will spend the rest of her life repaying the new ones.”

Tehelka, December 17, 2005.

Photos: (Late Ramdas Ambarwar's mother, and daughters Manjusha and Meenakshi; Lata Bhoyar with sons Shubham and Bunty; Farmer at cotton yard) by Sonia Faleiro.

Beautiful piece - in depth investigation into an issue with a huge number of implications, from local to international.

I would think that this kind of on the ground information would be of great value to everyone from Parliament to Greenpeace to Monsanto.

I hope that this article gets lots of attention - and good luck with the book as well, I am looking forward to it!

nice pics.

Many thanks for writing about this story in a very poignant manner. P. sainath has been writing about this story in Hindu (articles 1, 2, and 3). This is of course not restricted to Vidharba, but farmer suicides have been taking place in many parts of Andhra and Karnataka in the past several years.

Anup, thanks for the tip. I've being follwing Sainath's series on www.indiatogether.org, as also Jaideep Hardikar's excellent work on the subject, same site.

So, is there a way, where individuals can contribute in any way - monetary/non-monetary - to help people?

Raj

I'm re-producing, with permission from the blog administrator, two comments on The Indian Economy Blog (www.indianeconomy.org) made on Amit Varma's post linking to this article.

By Gaurav Sabnis:
1.This article is heart-breaking. However, a lot of broken hearts would think that the solutions to the problems are these -

a) Government should start paying the right price at the right time
b) Private money-lenders should be punished
c) Monsanto is an evil MNC. It screwed the farmers. So kick Monsanto out and abandon GM crops altogether. Also bar entry of foreign entities into agriculture.

However we should make them realises that the solutions are -

a) Government has no business(pun intended) buying agricultural produce. It should exit the field and let private players enter the fray.
b) Money-lenders are not the cause of problems. They are a symptom, much like corruption. Blaming money-lenders for a farmer’s suicide is like blaming flies swarming around a dead body for the death itself.
c) The rule of law should be implemented properly, especially contract enforcements. Just like other products have guarantees, warranties and service level agreements, so should companies like Monsanto. And if they or their product has reneged on the contract, then they should be punished. This will happen only when there is a proper legal system in place which enforces accountability.


2. By Aadisht Khanna:

One of the biggest problems with cotton is that it’s a ‘full or fail’ crop. It costs so much to produce (in terms of seeds, pesticides, fertilisers, etc) that if your crop fails, you have no chance but to plant it again to recover your investment with the next crop. But if that fails too, you’re in a vicious cycle. This is further complicated by the fact that if you don’t get the timing and quantity of the fertilisers and pesticides exactly right, you’ll ruin the crop.

Another large problem is that price contracts between end buyers and farmers hardly exist. Neither does co-operative or contract farming. This means that small farmers, who have very little technical knowledge about growing cotton start growing it, usually on a loan. In many cases, the loan is actually given by the guy who sells agrichemicals. The farmer has to repay the loan by pledging his crop to this chap, who will usually charge below market prices.

This is not a problem where simply pushing the government out of the equation will solve things. This is where a transparent market actually needs to be created- not just for cotton itself, but also for agricultural inputs, knowledge on how to grow it, and working capital to finance it- right now all done by the moneylenders.

Some options for how to create these markets:

1. Contract farming of cotton. The cotton processor agrees to buy cotton at a fixed price. The advantage of this is that it locks him in with a particular producer and gives him an incentive to ensure that the farmers are growing the crop properly (no over- or under- application of pesticides, planting at the right time, etc). It’ll probably need a hierarchy, though- co-operatives in between the farmers and the buyers to get economies of scale.
2. Improve the markets for other agricultural goods. A lot of cotton farmers in Andhra (which has had cotton suicides since 1999) turned to cotton simply because the market for chilli was broken- they could never sell their chilli crop and had to abandon it rotting on the road.

Extremely well-written article, Sonia. More power to your pen!

In Karnataka, cotton wasn't the only failing crop that drove farmers to suicides. A number of other crops failed too and when there seemed to be no end to the accruing debts, the men took the last step. It's however the families left behind that suffer more as you have shown in your excellently researched article.

Sonia, This is an extremely well researched and detailed article. Excellent job!!!!

I don't want us to make empty comments about this issue and forget about it. Its a fact - Govt. sucks, but blaming it alone would not provide us any solution. It would be nice to translate our sympathy into some useful action and help these poor souls.

Is there any NGO or other genuine agencies who are working for the farmers, to whom we can send in our contributions. This money should not fall into wrong hands. If there are any such agencies please, send us the details so that we can start a mass mailer asking for contributions.. Even if few hundreds of ppl can sent in some small contributions, it will help...

regards,


Sandeep

thank you for this article.

like the others, i too would love to know if there's anything that can be done. my mother is involved with a lot of innerwheel activities where they have in the past, adopted a deaf-and-mute school or helped the warli village (jawahar) among other projects. can we NRIs help through them?

I am not sure if it is appropriate to post it here, but some people have asked if they could help with monetary/non-monetary way. I can personally recommend Association for India's Development if people want to get involved in any fashion. I am, however, not aware of AID being involved in Vidarbha at the moment, but AID works broadly on issues that are the heart of cases like this. You can check out AID projects here, and Contribute to their One for India campaign here. I guess, I could safely point to Dilip, or Sunil to vouch for AID.

I was aware of the facts… but the way you have put it down. The heart churns. I hope government gets out of this business of buying agricultural product. I wonder if it is possible to create alterative markets....only then can we hope for permanent results....

Further discussion of this article / topic can be found at:

http://indianeconomy.org/2005/12/09/standing-at-the-door/

Excellently written and meticulously researched, your report is heart rending. I am making a modest donation to AID and certainly hope they take some desperately required aid to the bereaved families of Vidharba.

Thankyou for awakening my sometimes supressed conscience, Sonia, I admire your writing and greatly respect your journalistic integrity.

Best wishes,
Kavitha

Dear Sonia,

Nice work. But...
1. why did you not link up with previous suicides of farmers in this country

2.A box explaining the destruction of GM seeds would have been useful
a)Destruction to the soil
b)Destruction to other flora & fauna

3.About the various species of Bats, Praying Matizes, small Birds, worms, crabs, frogs which are natural allies of the farmers being driven to death along with the farmer

4. Destruction due to the usage of Endusulfan to the soil & to people who are using it

5. How can farmers be warned or told to be beware of Monsanto,Syngenta,Congentrix,Cargiletc. How can they be driven out of this beautiful earth, which they are raping & destroying ?

6. What is the Alternative ? Is there an alternative in sight ? Yesterday it was Zambia, today it is Vidharbha,Wynad, Punjab, Andhra, tomorrow ??? Or today it is Bt Cotton, tomorrow it will be Bt rice ?

7. It is a farmers right to store the seeds from the previous crops for the next crop. Why should they have to spent Rs 1,400/- to buy seeds from companies which are only germinating into slow painful death ?

8. Who are these so called scientists who have propagated & supported Bt in this part of the world ? What is the diference between them & George Bush or Osama Bin Laden. Aren't they all the same proactive propagators of violence & destruction. Aren't they all rapists & killers ? Why cannot they be brought to trial ?

9. I want to work with farmers, I have the energy & expertise. So during your research did you find any farmer who would be able to take the risk to use farming methods to question & to breakaway from the Monsanto way of farming. Do let me know.

Superb article - I do hope the powers to be are paying attention.

Aditi

Sonia...the educated among us, earning high salaries, those to whom a few thousand rupees per year would not make much difference, can either sit around complaining about inaction, or do something. If you have any ideas about ways in which one can help the families monetarily, please let me know. Thanks, Samir. samir.malik@gmail.com

Dear Sonia,

Excellent article. Thank you so much for writing it so poignantly.It is gut wrenching to note the plight of these people who do not get any return for their hard work.

so touching

Hello all.

Found a parody of the Monsanto logo being used for protest tee shirts:

http://www.cafepress.com/seeds_of_death